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THEODORE ROOSEVELT 



AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



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Hs?><:^o, 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA ■ SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
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THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 




Copyright by Arthur Lee. From a painting by P. Laszlo. 

PRESIDENT THEODORE ROOSEVELT IN HIS RIDING COSTUME. 



Theodore Roosevelt 



AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 



Neto gork 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1913 

Ail rights reserved 






Copyright, 1913, by the Outtook Company. 



Copyright, 1913, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1913. 









NorSriooIi ^rrss 

J. S. dishing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



W. 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Theodore Roosevelt ...... Frontispiece 

PAGE 

"My father, Theodore Roosevelt, was the best man I ever 

knew ".......... 5 

" My mother, Martha Bulloch, was a sweet, gracious, beauti- 
ful Southern woman, a delightful companion and beloved 
by everybody" ........ 9 

"I never saw Roswell until I was President" . . .11 

" Her mother, my grandmother, one of the dearest old ladies, 

lived with us" . . . . . .14 

"Two Georgia girls" — Martha Bulloch and Anna Bulloch 16 

"'My Uncle Jimmy' Bulloch was a dear old retired sea- 
captain — a veritable Colonel Newcome " ... 18 

"My Uncle Irvine Bulloch was a midshipman on the Ala- 
bama, and tired the last gun discharged from her bat- 
teries in the fight with the Kearsarge" .... 19 

The proprietor of the " Roosevelt Museum of Natural His- 
tory " . 24 

"This, and subsequent natural histories, were written down 
in blank books in simplified spelling, wholly unpremedi- 
tated and unscientific" ....... 25 

Presented to Mr. Roosevelt by the "Tennis Cabinet" . 32 

"Any man, if he chooses, can gradually school himself so as 

to do respec ably across country " .... 37 

The Tennis Cabinet 44 

" Once I invited an entire class of officers who were attend- 
ing lectures at the War College, to come on one of these 
walks . . . " . . . . . . . . -53 

Joseph Murray as he looks to-day ..... 66 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Michael J. Costello ........ 

Theodore Roosevelt and a group of his friends, when he was 
a member of the New York Legislature 

" Reform without bloodshed " 

President Roosevelt returning from the great bear hunt 
Newcastle, Colorado, in 1905 

A reunion ........ 

The Elkhorn ranch house and the deeds of purchase 

The Cow-punchers ...... 

On the long circle ...... 

Sheriff duty ........ 

" Seth Bullock became, and has ever since remained, one of 
my stanchest and most valued friends " 

The Bronco Buster, by Frederic Remington 

Theodore Roosevelt 

Mark Hanna 

Matthew Stanley Quay 

Jacob A. Riis 

Otto Raphael 

A squad of mounted police 

Captain Edward J. Bourke 

Theodore Roosevelt and the children of the tenement 

A Spanish cannon on the lawn at Sagamore 

Mr. Roosevelt at his desk when Assistant Secretary of the 
Navy .... 

The Colonel of the Rough Riders 

Colonel Theodore Roosevelt and a group of Rough Riders 

General Joseph Wheeler, in the foreground. Commander of 
the left wing of the army before San Juan Hill 

On the firing line ....... 

Theodore Roosevelt, Governor of New York State 

" Mr. Loeb gave me much information about various im- 
proper practices in the insurance business" 

" I got Mr. Perkins to serve on the Palisade Park Commis- 
sion ... to save the Palisades from vandalism " . 



PAGE 

72 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Father Doyle of the Paulist Fathers 
Sagamore Hill .... 
Theodore Roosevelt in winter riding costume 
Under the porch at Sagamore 
Before the morning ride at Sagamore 
From the summer house at Sagamore 
Jack and his master 
The north room at Sagamore 
The mistress of Sagamore Hill 
The sixteen cousins 
Bubbles 
Daisies 

Josiah and his master . 
The obstacle race around the old barn 
The small boy of the White House 
The first grandchild at Sagamore Hill 
President Roosevelt . . 
The White House from the garden 
Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt 
The Rough Rider 
The soap-and-water cure 
Rear portico — the \\ hite House 
His favorite author 
The Roosevelt dam in Arizona 
The Roosevelt dam irrigating a young orchard 
Down the Mississippi ..... 
The first governors' conference at the White House 
Palisades, looking toward Slao Rock in the northeast 



uad- 



rant of Crater-Crater, N 
Oscar Straus 
Herbert Knox Smith 
William H. Moody 
Charles J. Bonaparte 
Paul Morton 
James R. Garfield 



ational Park, Oregon 



331 

343 
344 
346 
348 
353 
357 

359 
362 

365 
367 
369 
371 
373 
374 
377 
380 

387 
392 
398 
410 
418 
424 

433 
442 
446 
450 

458 
466 
470 
476 
481 
487 
490 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Gifford Pinchot . , 

Father Curran ........ 

The coal miners ........ 

Breaker boys •......, 

Medal awarded by Mr. Roosevelt for two years' continuou 

service on the Panama Canal .... 

Colonel G. W. Goethals 

" Kindred spirits of the strenuous life "... 
Confiscated by the Berlin police. What are they afraid of 

Is it this .? . . 

A gate at the upper lock at Gatun .... 

Nobel prize diploma in case ...... 

Peace commission at Portsmouth .... 

George von Lengerke Meyer, Ambassador Extraordinary 

and Plenipotentiary to Russia .... 

Nobel peace prize medallion ..... 

The fleet in the Straits of Magellan .... 

Senator Lodge ........ 

President Roosevelt and the gun pointers of the U. S. bat 

tleship Missouri ....... 

The return of the fleet ; entering Chesapeake Bay 
Brass Buddha ........ 



PAGE 

496 

509 

522 

530 

547 

553 
558 

562 
568 
575 
584 

587 
591 

594 

600 

603 
604 
620 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT 



AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



FOREWORD 

NATURALLY, there are chapters of my autobiog- 
raphy which cannot now be written. 
It seems to me that, for the nation as for the 
individual, what is most important is to insist on 
the vital need of combining certain sets of qualities, which 
separately are common enough, and, alas, useless enough. 
Practical efficiency is common, and lofty idealism not un- 
common ; it is the combination which is necessary, and the 
combination is rare. Love of peace is common among 
weak, short-sighted, timid, and lazy persons ; and on the 
other hand courage is found among many men of evil 
temper and bad character. Neither quality shall by itself 
avail. Justice among the nations of mankind, and the 
uplifting of humanity, can be brought about only by those 
strong and daring men who with wisdom love peace, but 
who love righteousness more than peace. Facing the im- 
mense complexity of modern social and industrial con- 
ditions, there is need to use freely and unhesitatingly 
the collective power of all of us ; and yet no exercise of 
collective power will ever avail if the average individual 
does not keep his or her sense of personal duty, initiative, 
and responsibility. There is need to develop all the virtues 
that have the state for their sphere of action ; but these 
virtues are as dust in a windy street unless back of them 
lie the strong and tender virtues of a family life based 
on the love of the one man for the one woman and 



vi FOREWORD 

on their joyous and fearless acceptance of their common 
obligation to the children that are theirs. There must be 
the keenest sense of duty, and with it must go the joy of 
living; there must be shame at the thought of shirking the 
hard work of the world, and at the same time delight in 
the many-sided beauty of life. With soul of i^ame and 
temper of steel we must act as our coolest judgment bids us. 
We must exercise the largest charity towards the wrong-doer 
that is compatible with relentless war against the wrong- 
doing. We must be just to others, generous to others, and 
yet we must realize that it is a shameful and a wicked thing 
not to withstand oppression with high heart and ready hand. 
With gentleness and tenderness there must go dauntless 
bravery and grim acceptance of labor and hardship and 
peril. All for each, and each for all, is a good motto ; but 
only on condition that each works with might and main 
to so maintain himself as not to be a burden to others. 

W^e of the great modern democracies must strive unceas- 
ingly to make our several countries lands in which a poor 
man who works hard can live comfortably and honestly, 
and in which a rich man cannot live dishonestly nor in sloth- 
ful avoidance of duty ; and yet we must judge rich man and 
poor man alike by a standard which rests on conduct and 
not on caste, and we must frown with the same stern sever- 
ity on the mean and vicious envy which hates and would 
plunder a man because he is well off and on the brutal and 
selfish arrogance which looks down on and exploits the man 
with whom life has gone hard. 

THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

Sagamore Hill, Oct. i, 1913. 



CONTENTS 



I. Boyhood and Youth 

II. The Vigor of Life 

III. Practical Politics 

IV. In Cowboy Land . 
V. Applied Idealism . 

VI. The New York Police 

VII. The War of America the Unready 

VIII. The New York Governorship 

IX. Outdoors and Indoors . 

X. The Presidency; Making an Old Party Pro 
GRESSIVE ...... 

XL The Natural Resources of the Nation 

XII. The Big Stick and the Square Deal 

XIII. Social and Industrial Justice . 

XIV. The Monroe Doctrine and the Panama Canal 
XV. The Peace of Righteousness . . . , 



PAGE 

I 

32 

61 

103 

144 

185 
223 

293 

342 

379 
428 
462 
501 
543 
575 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT 

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

CHAPTER I 

BOYHOOD AND YOUTH 

MY grandfather on my father's side was of almost 
purely Dutch blood. When he was young he 
still spoke some Dutch, and Dutch was last used 
in the services of the Dutch Reformed Church in 
New York while he was a small boy. 

About 1644 his ancestor Klaes Martensen van Roosevelt 
came to New Amsterdam as a "settler" — the euphemistic 
name for an immigrant who came over in the steerage of a 
sailing ship in the seventeenth century instead of the steer- 
age of a steamer in the nineteenth century. From that 
time for the next seven generations from father to son every 
one of us was born on Manhattan Island. 

My father's paternal ancestors were of Holland stock ; 
except that there was one named Waldron, a wheelwright, 
who was one of the Pilgrims who remained in Holland when 
the others came over to found Alassachusetts, and who 
then accompanied the Dutch adventurers to New Amster- 
dam. Aly father's mother was a Pennsylvanian. Her for- 
bears had come to Pennsylvania with William Penn, some 
in the same ship with him ; they were of the usual type of 
the immigration of that particular place and time. They 
included Welsh and English Quakers, an Irishman, — with 
a Celtic name, and apparently not a Quaker, — and peace- 
loving Germans, who were among the founders of German- 
town, having been driven from their Rhineland homes when 
the armies of Louis the Fourteenth ravaged the Palatinate ; 



2 THEODORE ROOSE^"ELT — AX AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

and, in addition, representatives of a by-no-means altogether 
peaceful people, the Scotch Irish, who came to Pennsylvania 
a little later, early in the eighteenth century. My grand- 
mother was a woman of singular sweetness and strength, the 
keystone of the arch in her relations with her husband and 
sons. Although she was not herself Dutch, it was she who 
taught me the only Dutch I ever knew, a baby song of which 
the hrst line ran, "Trippe troppa tronjes." I alwa}s remem- 
bered this, and when I was in East Africa it proved a bond 
of union between me and the Boer settlers, not a few of whom 
knew it, although at first they always had difficulty in un- 
derstanding my pronunciation — at which I do not wonder. 
It was interesting to meet these men whose ancestors had 
gone to the Cape about the time that mine went to America 
two centuries and a half previousl}-, and to find that the de- 
scendants of the two streams of emigrants still crooned to 
their children some at least of the same nursery songs. 

Of my great-grandfather Roosevelt and his family life a 
century and over ago I know little beyond what is implied 
in some of his books that have come down to me — the 
Letters of Junius, a biography of John Paul Jones, Chief 
Justice Marshall's "Life of Washington." They seem to 
indicate that his library was less interesting than that of 
my wife's great-grandfather at the same time, which cer- 
tainly included such volumes as the original Edinburgh 
Rtvi(-:r, for we have them now on our own book-shelves. 
Of my grandfather Roosevelt m}- most vivid childish remi- 
niscence is not something I saw, but a tale that was told me 
concerning him. In his boyhood Sunday was as dismal a 
day for small Calvinistic children of Dutch descent as if 
they had been of Puritan or Scotch Covenanting or French 
Huguenot descent — and I speak as one proud of his Hol- 
land, Huguenot, and Covenanting ancestors, and proud that 
the blood of that stark Puritan divine Jonathan Edwards 
fiows in the veins of his children. One summer afternoon, 
after listening to an unusualh- long Dutch Reformed sermon 
for the second time that day, my grandfather, a small boy, 
running home before the congregation had dispersed, ran 
into a party of pigs, which then wandered free in New 



BOYHOOD AND YOUTH 



3 



York's streets. He promptly mounted a big boar, which no 
less promptly bolted and carried him at full speed through 
the midst of the outraged congregation. 

By the way, one of the Roosevelt documents which came 
down to me illustrates the change that has come over cer- 
tain aspects of public life since the time which pessimists 
term "the earlier and better days of the Republic." Old 
Isaac Roosevelt was a member of an Auditing Committee 
which shortly after the close of the Revolution approved the 
following bill : 



The State of iS'eiv York, to John Cape Dr. 


To a Dinner Given by His Excellency tjie Governor 


and Council to their Excellencies the Minnister of 


France and General Washington & Co. 


1783 


December 


To 120 dinners at 48: 0:0 


To i^q Bottles Madira . . . 




54: 0:0 




' 36 ditto Port .... 




10: 16:0 




' 60 ditto English Beer . . 




9: 0:0 




' 30 Bouls Punch .... 




9: 0:0 




' 8 dinners for Musick 




1:12:0 




' 10 ditto for Sarvts . . . 




2:0:0 




' 60 Wine Glasses Broken . 




4 : 10:0 




' 8 Cutt decanters Broken 




3 : 0:0 




' Coffee for 8 Gentlemen . 




1:12:0 




' Music fees &ca . . . 




8: 0:0 




Fruit & Nuts .... 




5 : 0:0 




^1^156: 10:0 


ByC 


jsh . . . 100:16:0 




55:14:0 


We a Committee of Council having examined the 


above account do certify it (amounting to one 


hundred and fifty-six Pounds ten Shillings) to 


be just. 


December 17th 1783. 


Isaac Roosevelt 


Jas. Duane 


Egbt. Benson 


Fred. Jay 


Received the above Contents in full 


New York 17th December 1783 


John Cape 



4 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

Think of the Governor of New York now submitting such 
a bill for such an entertainment of the French Ambassador 
and the President of the United States ! Falstaff's views of 
the proper proportion between sack and bread are borne out 
by the proportion between the number of bowls of punch 
and bottles of port, Madeira, and beer consumed, and the 
"coffee for eight gentlemen" — ^apparently the only ones 
who lasted through to that stage of the dinner. Especially 
admirable is the nonchalant manner in which, obviously as 
a result of the drinking of said bottles of wine and bowls of 
punch, it is recorded that eight cut-glass decanters and sixty 
wine-glasses were broken. 

During the Revolution some of my forefathers, North 
and South, served respectably, but without distinction, in 
the army, and others rendered similar service in the Conti- 
nental Congress or in various local legislatures. By that 
time those who dwelt in the North were for the most part 
merchants, and those who dwelt in the South, planters. 

Aly mother's people were predominantly of Scotch, but 
also of Huguenot and English, descent. She was a Georgian, 
her people having come to Georgia from South Carolina before 
the Revolution. The original Bulloch was a lad from near Glas- 
gow, who came hither a couple of centuries ago, just as hundreds 
of thousands of needy, enterprising Scotchmen have gone to 
the four quarters of the globe in the intervening two hun- 
dred years. My mother's great-grandfather, Archibald 
Bulloch, was the first Revolutionary "President" of Georgia. 
My grandfather, her father, spent the winters in Savannah 
and the summers at Roswell, in the Georgia uplands near 
Atlanta, finally making Roswell his permanent home. He 
used to travel thither with his family and their belongings 
in his own carriage, followed by a baggage wagon. I never 
saw Roswell until I was President, but my mother told me 
so much about the place that when I did see it I felt as if I 
already knew every nook and corner of it, and as it if were 
haunted by the ghosts of all the men and women who had 
lived there. I do not mean merely my own family, I mean 
the slaves. My mother and her sister, my aunt, used to 
tell us children all kinds of stories about the slaves. One 




My father, Theodore Roosevelt, was the best man I ever knew." 



6 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

of the most fascinating referred to a very old darky called 
Bear Bob, because in the early days of settlement he had 
been partially scalped by a black bear. Then there was 
Mom' Grace, who was for a time my mother's nurse, and 
whom I had supposed to be dead, but who greeted me when 
I did come to Roswell, very respectable, and apparently 
with years of life before her. The two chief personages of 
the drama that used to be repeated to us were Daddy Luke, 
the Negro overseer, and his wife. Mom' Charlotte. I never 
saw either Daddy Luke or Mom' Charlotte, but I inherited 
the care of them when my mother died. After the close of 
the war they resolutely refused to be emancipated or leave 
the place. The only demand they made upon us was enough 
money annually to get a new "critter," that is, a mule. 
With a certain lack of ingenuity the mule was reported each 
Christmas as having passed away, or at least as having 
become so infirm as to necessitate a successor — a solemn 
fiction which neither deceived nor was intended to deceive, 
but which furnished a gauge for the size of the Christmas 
gift. 

My maternal grandfather's house was on the line of Sher- 
man's march to the sea, and pretty much everything in it 
that was portable was taken by the boys in blue, including 
most of the books in the library. When I was President 
the facts about my ancestry were published, and a former 
soldier in Sherman's army sent me back one of the books 
with my grandfather's name in it. It was a little copy of 
the poems of "Mr. Gray" — an eighteenth-century edition 
printed in Glasgow. 

On October 27, 1858, I was born at No. 28 East Twentieth 
Street, New York City, in the house in which we lived 
during the time that my two sisters and my brother and I 
were small children. It was furnished in the canonical taste 
of the New York which George William Curtis described in 
the Potiphar Papers. The black haircloth furniture in the 
dining-room scratched the bare legs of the children when 
they sat on it. The middle room was a library, with tables, 
chairs, and bookcases of gloomy respectability. It was 
without windows, and so was available only at night. The 



BOYHOOD AND YOUTH 7 

front room, the parlor, seemed to us children to be a room of 
much splendor, but was open for general use only on Sunday 
evening or on rare occasions when there were parties. The 
Sunday evening family gathering was the redeeming feature 
in a day which otherwise we children did not enjoy — 
chiefly because we were all of us made to wear clean clothes 
and keep neat. The ornaments of that parlor I remember 
now, including the gas chandelier decorated with a great 
quantity of cut-glass prisms. These prisms struck me as 
possessing peculiar magnificence. One of them fell off one 
day, and I hastily grabbed it and stowed it away, passing 
several days of furtive delight in the treasure, a delight 
always alloyed with fear that I would be found out and con- 
victed of larceny. There was a Swiss wood-carving repre- 
senting a very big hunter on one side of an exceedingly 
small mountain, and a herd of chamois, disproportionately 
small for the hunter and large for the mountain, just across 
the ridge. This always fascinated us ; but there was a 
small chamois kid for which we felt agonies lest the hunter 
might come on it and kill it. There was also a Russian 
moujik drawing a gilt sledge on a piece of malachite. Some 
one mentioned in my hearing that malachite was a valuable 
marble. This fixed in my mind that it was valuable exactly 
as diamonds are valuable. I accepted that moujik as a 
priceless work of art, and it was not until I was well in 
middle age that it occurred to me that I was mistaken. 

Now and then we children were taken round to our grand- 
father's house ; a big house for the New York of those days, on 
the corner of Fourteenth Street and Broadway, fronting Union 
Square. Inside there was a large hall running up to the 
roof; there was a tesselated black and white marble floor, 
and a circular staircase round the sides of the hall, from the 
top floor down. We children much admired both the tessel- 
lated floor and the circular staircase. I think we were right 
about the latter, but I am not so sure as to the tessellated 
floor. 

The summers we spent in the country, now at one place, 
now at another. We children, of course, loved the country 
beyond anything. We disliked the city. We were always 



8 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

wildly eager to get to the country when spring came, and 
very sad when in the late fall the family moved back to 
town. In the country we of course had all kinds of pets — 
cats, dogs, rabbits, a coon, and a sorrel Shetland pony 
named General Grant. When my younger sister first heard 
of the real General Grant, by the way, she was much struck 
by the coincidence that some one should have given him the 
same name as the pony. (Thirty years later my own chil- 
dren had their pony Grant.) In the country we children 
ran barefoot much of the time, and the seasons went by in 
a round of uninterrupted and enthralling pleasures — super- 
vising the haying and harvesting, picking apples, hunting 
frogs successfully and woodchucks unsuccessfully, gathering 
hickory-nuts and chestnuts for sale to patient parents, build- 
ing wigwams in the woods, and sometimes playing Indians in 
too realistic manner by staining ourselves (and incidentally 
our clothes) in liberal fashion with poke-cherry juice. 
Thanksgiving was an appreciated festival, but it in no way 
came up to Christmas. Christmas was an occasion of liter- 
ally delirious joy. In the evening we hung up our stockings 
— or rather the biggest stockings we could borrow from the 
grown-ups — and before dawn we trooped in to open them 
while sitting on father's and mother's bed ; and the bigger 
presents were arranged, those for each child on its own 
table, in the drawing-room, the doors to which were thrown 
open after breakfast. I never knew any one else have what 
seemed to me such attractive Christmases, and in the next 
generation I tried to reproduce them exactly for my own 
children. 

My father, Theodore Roosevelt, was the best m.an I ever 
knew. He combined strength and courage with gentleness, 
tenderness, and great unselfishness. He would not tolerate 
in us children selfishness or cruelty, idleness, cowardice, or 
untruthfulness. As we grew older he made us understand 
that the same standard of clean living was demanded for 
the boys as for the girls ; that what was wrong in a woman 
could not be right in a man. With great love and patience, 
and the most understanding sympathy and consideration, 
he combined insistence on discipline. He never physically 




My mother, Martha Bulloch, was a sweet, gracious, beautiful Southern 
woman, a delightful companion and beloved by everybody." 



lo THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

punished me but once, but he was the only man of whom I 
was ever really afraid. I do not mean that it was a wrong 
fear, for he was entirely just, and we children adored him. 
We used to wait in the library in the evening until we could 
hear his key rattling in the latch of the front hall, and then 
rush out to greet him ; and we would troop into his room 
while he was dressing, to stay there as long as we were per- 
mitted, eagerly examining anything which came out of his 
pockets which could be regarded as an attractive novelty. 
Every child has fixed in his memory various details which 
strike it as of grave importance. The trinkets he used to 
keep in a little box on his dressing-table we children always 
used to speak of as "treasures." The word, and some of 
the trinkets themselves, passed on to the next generation. 
My own children, when small, used to troop into my room 
while I was dressing, and the gradually accumulating 
trinkets in the "ditty-box" — the gift of an enlisted man 
in the navy — always excited rapturous joy. On occasions 
of solemn festivity each child would receive a trinket for 
his or her "very own." My children, by the way, enjoyed 
one pleasure I do not remember enjoying myself. When I 
came back from riding, the child who brought the bootjack 
would itself promptly get into the boots, and clump up 
and down the room with a delightful feeling of kinship with 
Jack of the seven-league strides. 

The punishing incident I have referred to happened when 
I was four years old. I bit my elder sister's arm. I do not 
remember biting her arm, but I do remember running down 
to the yard, perfectly conscious that I had committed a 
crime. From the yard I went into the kitchen, got some 
dough from the cook, and crawled under the kitchen table. 
In a minute or two my father entered from the yard and 
asked where I was. The warm-hearted Irish cook had a 
characteristic contempt for "informers," but although she 
said nothing she compromised between informing and her 
conscience by casting a look under the table. My father 
immediately dropped on all fours and darted for me. I 
feebly heaved the dough at him, and, having the advantage 
of him because I could stand up under the table, got a fair 



12 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

start for the stairs, but was caught halfway up them. 
The punishment that ensued fitted the crime, and I hope — 
and believe — that it did me good. 

I never knew any one who got greater joy out of living 
than did my father, or any one who more whole-heartedly 
performed every duty ; and no one whom I have ever met 
approached his combination of enjoyment of life and per- 
formance of duty. He and my mother were given to a hos- 
pitality that at that time was associated more commonly 
with southern than northern households ; and, especially 
in their later years when they had moved up town, in the 
neighborhood of Central Park, they kept a charming, open 
house. 

My father worked hard at his business, for he died when 
he was forty-six, too early to have retired. He was in- 
terested in every social reform movement, and he did an 
immense amount of practical charitable work himself. He 
was a big, powerful man, with a leonine face, and his heart 
filled with gentleness for those who needed help or protec- 
tion, and with the possibility of much wrath against a bully 
or an oppressor. He was very fond of riding both on the 
road and across the country, and was also a great whip. 
He usually drove four-in-hand, or else a spike team, that is, 
a pair with a third horse in the lead. I do not suppose that 
such a team exists now. The trap that he drove we always 
called the high phaeton. The wheels turned under in front. 
I have it yet. He drove long-tailed horses, harnessed loose 
in light American harness, so that the whole rig had no pos- 
sible resemblance to anything that would be seen now. My 
father always excelled in improving every spare half-hour 
or three-quarters of an hour, whether for work or enjoyment. 
Much of his four-in-hand driving was done in the summer 
afternoons when he would come out on the train from his 
business in New York. My mother and one or perhaps 
two of us children might meet him at the station. I can 
see him now getting out of the car in his linen duster, jump- 
ing into the wagon, and instantly driving off at a rattling 
pace, the duster sometimes bagging like a balloon. The 
four-in-hand, as can be gathered from the above description. 



BOYHOOD AND YOUTH 13 

did not in any way in his eyes represent possible pageantry. 
He drove it because he liked it. He was always preaching 
caution to his boys, but in this respect he did not practice 
his preaching overmuch himself; and, being an excellent 
whip, he liked to take chances. Generally they came out 
all right. Occasionally they did not; but he was even 
better at getting out of a scrape than into it. Once when 
we were driving into New York late at night the leaders 
stopped. He flicked them, and the next moment we could 
dimly make out that they had jumped. It then appeared 
that the street was closed and that a board had been placed 
across it, resting on two barrels, but without a lantern. 
Over this board the leaders had jumped, and there was 
considerable excitement before we got the board taken off 
the barrels and resumed our way. When in the city on 
Thanksgiving or Christmas, my father was very apt to drive 
my mother and a couple of friends up to the racing park to 
take lunch. But he was always back in time to go to the 
dinner at the Newsboys' Lodging-House, and not infre- 
quently also to Miss Sattcry's Night School for little Italians. 
At a very early age we children were taken with him and 
were required to help. He was a stanch friend of Charles 
Loring Brace, and was particularly interested in the News- 
boys' Lodging-Houses and in the night schools and in get- 
ting the children off the streets and out on farms in the 
West. When I was President, the Governor of Alaska 
under me. Governor Brady, was one of these ex-newsboys 
who had been sent from New York out West by Mr. Brace 
and my father. My father was greatly interested in the 
societies to prevent cruelty to children and cruelty to ani- 
mals. On Sundays he had a mission class. On his way to 
it he used to drop us children at our Sunday-school in Dr. 
Adams's Presbyterian Church on Madison Square; I re- 
member hearing my aunt, my mother's sister, saying that 
when he walked along with us children he always reminded 
her of Greatheart in Bunyan. Under the spur of his 
example I taught a mission class myself for three years 
before going to college and for all four years that I was in 
college. I do not think I made much of a success of it. But 



14 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



the other day on getting out of a taxi in New York 
the chauffeur spoke to me and told me that he was one 
of my old Sunday-school pupils. I remembered him 
well, and was much pleased to find that he was an ardent 
Bull Mooser ! 

My mother, Martha Bulloch, was a sweet, gracious, beau- 
tiful Southern woman, a delightful companion and beloved 

by everybody. She was en- 
tirely "unreconstructed" 
to the day of her death. 
Her mother, my grand- 
mother, one of the dearest 
of old ladies, lived with us, 
and was distinctly over- 
indulgent to us children, 
being quite unable to 
harden her heart towards 
us even when the occasion 
demanded it. Towards the 
close of the Civil War, 
although a very small boy, 
I grew to have a partial 
but alert understanding of 
the fact that the family 
were not one in their views 
about that conflict, my 
father being a strong Lin- 
coln Republican ; andonce, 
when I felt that I had been 
wronged by maternal dis- 
cipline during the day, I 
attempted a partial ven- 
geance by praying with loud fervor for the success of the Union 
arms, when we all came to say our prayers before my mother in 
the evening. She was not only a most devoted mother, but 
was also blessed with a strong sense of humor, and she was 
too much amused to punish me; but I was warned not to 
repeat the offense, under penalty of my father's being in- 
formed — he being the dispenser of serious punishment. 




" Her mother, my grandmother, one of the 
dearest old ladies, lived with us." 



BOYHOOD AND YOUTH 15 

Morning prayers were with my father. We used to stand 
at the foot of the stairs, and when father came down we 
called out, "I speak for you and the cubby-hole too!" 
There were three of us young children, and we used to sit 
with father on the sofa while he conducted morning prayers. 
The place between father and the arm of the sofa we called 
the "cubby-hole." The child who got that place we re- 
garded as especially favored both in comfort and somehow 
or other in rank and title. The two who were left to sit on 
the much wider expanse of sofa on the other side of father 
were outsiders for the time being. 

My aunt Anna, my mother's sister, lived with us. She 
was as devoted to us children as was my mother herself, 
and we were equally devoted to her in return. She taught 
us our lessons while we were little. She and my mother 
used to entertain us by the hour with tales of life on the 
Georgia plantations; of hunting fox, deer, and wildcat; of 
the long-tailed driving horses, Boone and Crockett, and of 
the riding horses, one of which was named Buena Vista in a 
fit of patriotic exaltation during the Mexican War; and of 
the queer goings-on in the Negro quarters. She knew all 
the "Br'er Rabbit" stories, and I was brought up on them. 
One of my uncles, Robert Roosevelt, was much struck with 
them, and took them down from her dictation, publishing 
them in Harper' s^ where they fell flat. This was a good 
many years before a genius arose who in "Uncle Remus" 
made the stories immortal. 

My mother's two brothers, James Dunwoodie Bulloch 
and Irvine Bulloch, came to visit us shortly after the 
close of the war. Both came under assumed names, as 
they were among the Confederates who were at that time 
exempted from the amnesty. "Uncle Jimmy" Bulloch was 
a dear old retired sea-captain, utterly unable to "get on" 
in the worldly sense of that phrase, as valiant and simple 
and upright a soul as ever lived, a veritable Colonel New- 
come. He was an Admiral in the Confederate navy, and 
was the builder of the famous Confederate war vessel Ala- 
bama. My uncle Irvine Bulloch was a midshipman on the 
Alabama^ and fired the last gun discharged from her batteries 



i6 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

in the fight with the Kearsarge. Both of these uncles Hved 
in Liverpool after the war. 

My uncle Jimmy Bulloch was forgiving and just in refer- 
ence to the Union forces, and could discuss all phases of the 
Civil War with entire fairness and generosity. But in Eng- 
lish politics he promptly became a Tory of the most ultra- 
conservative school. Lincoln and Grant he could admire, 
but he would not listen to anything in favor of Mr. Glad- 





"Two Georgia Gikls" Martha Bulloch and Anna Bulloch. 

Stone. The only occasions on which I ever shook his faith 
in me were when I would venture meekly to suggest that 
some of the manifestly preposterous falsehoods about Mr. 
Gladstone could not be true. My uncle was one of the best 
men I have ever known, and when I have sometimes been 
tempted to wonder how good people can believe of me the 
unjust and impossible things they do believe, I have con- 
soled myself by thinking of Uncle Jimmy Bulloch's perfectly 
sincere conviction that Gladstone was a man of quite excep- 
tional and nameless infamy in both public and private life. 



BOYHOOD AND YOUTH 17 

I was a sickly, delicate boy, suffered much from asthma, 
and frequently had to be taken away on trips to find a place 
where I could breathe. One of my memories is of my father 
walking up and down the room with me in his arms at night 
when I was a very small person, and of sitting up in bed 
gasping, with my father and mother trying to help me. I 
went very little to school. I never went to the public 
schools, as my own children later did, both at the "Cove 
school" at Oyster Bay and at the "Ford school" in Wash- 
ington. For a few months I attended Professor McMullen's 
school in Twentieth Street near the house where I was 
born, but most of the time I had tutors. As I have already 
said, my aunt taught me when I was small. At one time 
we had a French governess, a loved and valued "mam'selle," 
in the household. 

When I was ten years old I made my first journey to Eu- 
rope. My birthday was spent in Cologne, and In order to 
give me a thoroughly "party" feeling I remember that my 
mother put on full dress for my birthday dinner. I do not 
think I gained anything from this particular trip abroad. 
I cordially hated it, as did my younger brother and sister. 
Practically all the enjoyment we had was in exploring any 
ruins or mountains when we could get away from our elders, 
and in playing in the different hotels. Our one desire was 
to get back to America, and we regarded Europe with the 
most Ignorant chauvinism and contempt. Four years later, 
however, I made another journey to Europe, and was old 
enough to enjoy it thoroughly and profit by It. 

While still a small boy I began to take an Interest In natural 
history. I remember distinctly the first day that I started 
on my career as zoologist. I was walking up Broadway, and 
as I passed the market to which I used sometimes to be sent 
before breakfast to get strawberries I suddenly saw a dead 
seal laid out on a slab of wood. That seal filled me with 
every possible feeling of romance and adventure. I asked 
where It was killed, and was informed in the harbor. I had 
already begun to read some of Mayne Reld's books and other 
boys' books of adventure, and I felt that this seal brought 
all these adventures in realistic fashion before me. As long 
c 



i8 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



as that seal remained there I haunted the neighborhood of 
the market day after day. I measured it, and I recall that, 
not having a tape measure, I had to do my best to get its 
girth with a folding pocket foot-rule, a difficult undertaking. 
I carefully made a record of the utterly useless measurements, 

and at once began to write 
a natural history of my 
own, on the strength of that 
seal. This, and subse- 
quent natural histories, 
were written down in blank 
books in simplified spelling, 
wholly unpremeditated and 
unscientific. I had vague 
aspirations of in some way 
or another owning and pre- 
serving that seal, but they 
nevergot beyond the purely 
formless stage. I think, 
however, I did get the 
seal's skull, and with two 
of my cousins promptly 
started what we ambi- 
tiously called the "Roose- 
velt Museum of Natural 
History." The collections 
were at first kept in my 
room, until a rebellion on 
the part of the chamber- 
maid received the approval 
of the higher authorities 
of the household and the collection was moved up to a kind 
of bookcase in the back hall upstairs. It was the ordinary 
small boy's collection of curios, quite incongruous and en- 
tirely valueless except from the standpoint of the boy 
himself. My father and mother encouraged me warmly 
in this, as they always did in anything that could give 
me wholesome pleasure or help to develop me. 

The adventure of the seal and the novels of Mayne Reid 




" ' My Uncle Jimmy ' Bulloch was a dear 
old retired sea-captain — a veritable 
Colonel Newcome." 



BOYHOOD AND YOUTH 



19 



together strengthened my Instinctive interest In natural 
history. I was too young to understand much of Mayne 
Reid, excepting the adventure part and the natural history 
part — these enthralled me. But of course my reading was 
not wholly confined to natural history. There was very 
little eflFort made to compel me to read books, my father and 
mother having the good sense not to try to get me to read 
anything I did not like, un- 
less it was in the way of 
study. I was given the 
chance to read books that 
they thought I ought to 
read, but if I did not like 
them I was then given 
some other good book that 
I did like. There were 
certain books that were 
taboo. For instance, I was 
not allowed to read dime 
novels. I obtained some 
surreptitiously and did read 
them, but I do not think 
that the enjoyment com- 
pensated for the feeling of 
guilt. I was also forbidden 
to read the only one of 
Ouida's books which I 
wished to read — -"Under 
Two Flags." I did read it, 
nevertheless, with greedy 
and fierce hope of coming on something unhealthy ; but as 
a matter of fact all the parts that might have seemed un- 
healthy to an older person made no impression on me what- 
ever. I simply enjoyed in a rather confused way the general 
adventures. 

I think there ought to be children's books. I think that 
the child will like grown-up books also, and I do not believe 
a child's book is really good unless grown-ups get something 
out of it. For instance, there is a book I did not have when 




My Uncle Irvine Bulloch was a mid- 
shipman ON THE Alabama, and fired the 

LAST GUN DISCHARGED FROM HER BATTER- 
IES IN THE FIGHT WITH THE Kearsargc." 



20 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

I was a child because It was not written. It Is Laura E. 
RIchards's "Nursery Rhymes." My own children loved 
them dearly, and their mother and I loved them almost 
equally; the delightfully light-hearted "Man from New 
Mexico who Lost his Grandmother out In the Snow," the 
adventures of "The Owl, the Eel, and the Warming-Pan," 
and the extraordinary genealogy of the kangaroo whose 
"father was a whale with a feather In his tall who lived In 
the Greenland sea," while "his mother was a shark who 
kept very dark In the Gulf of Carlbee." 

As a small boy I had Our Young folks, which I then 
firmly believed to be the very best magazine In the world 
— a belief, I may add, which I have kept to this day un- 
changed, for I seriously doubt If any magazine for old or 
young has ever surpassed It. Both my wife and I have 
the bound volumes of Our Young Folks which we pre- 
served from our youth. 1 have tried to read again the 
Mayne Reid books which I so dearly loved as a boy, only 
to find, alas ! that It Is Impossible. But I really believe 
that I enjoy going over Our Young Folks now nearly as 
much as ever. "Cast Away In the Cold," "Grandfather's 
Struggle for a Homestead," "The William Henry Letters" 
and a dozen others like them were first-class, good healthy 
stories. Interesting In the first place, and In the next place 
teaching manliness, decency, and good conduct. At the 
cost of being deemed effeminate, I will add that I greatly 
liked the girls' stories — "Pussy Willow" and "A Summer 
In Leslie Goldthwalte's Life," just as I worshiped "Little 
Men" and "Little Women'' and "An Old-Fashloned 
Girl." 

This enjoyment of the gentler side of life did not prevent 
my reveling In such tales of adventure as Ballantyne's 
stories, or Marryat's "Midshipman Easy." I suppose 
everybody has kinks in him, and even as a child there were 
books which I ought to have liked and did not. For in- 
stance, I never cared at all for the first part of "Robinson 
Crusoe" (and although it is unquestionably the best part, 
I do not care for it now) ; whereas the second part, contain- 
ing the adventures of Robinson Crusoe, with the wolves in 



BOYHOOD AND YOUTH 21 

the Pyrenees, and out in the Far East, simply fascinated 
me. What I did lilce in the first part were the adventures 
before Crusoe finally reached his island, the fight with the 
Sallee Rover, and the allusion to the strange beasts at night 
taking their improbable bath in the ocean. Thanks to 
being already an embryo zoologist, I disliked the " Swiss _ 
Family Robinson" because of the wholly impossible collec- 
tion of animals met by that worthy family as they ambled 
inland from the wreck. Even in poetry it was the relation 
of adventures that most appealed to me as a boy. At a 
pretty early age I began to read certain books of poetry, 
notably Longfellow's poem, "The Saga of King Olaf," 
which absorbed me. This introduced me to Scandinavian 
literature ; and I have never lost my interest in and affection 
for it. 

Among my first books was a volume of a hopelessly un- 
scientific kind by Mayne Reid, about mammals, illustrated 
with pictures no more artistic than but quite as thrilling as 
those in the typical school geography. When my father 
found how deeply interested I was in this not very accurate 
volume, he gave me a little book by J. G. Wood, the English 
writer of popular books on natural history, and then a larger 
one of his called "Homes Without Hands." Both of these 
were cherished possessions. They were studied eagerly; 
and they finally descended to my children. The "Homes 
Without Hands," by the way, grew to have an added asso- 
ciation in connection with a pedagogical failure on my part. 
In accordance with what I believed was some kind of modern 
theory of making education interesting and not letting it 
become a task, I endeavored to teach my eldest small boy 
one or two of his letters from the title-page. As the letter 
"H" appeared in the title an unusual number of times, I 
selected that to begin on, my effort being to keep the small 
boy interested, not to let him realize that he was learning a 
lesson, and to convince him that he was merely having a 
good time. Whether it was the theory or my method of 
applying it that was defective I do not know, but I certainly 
absolutely eradicated from his brain any ability to learn 
what "H" was ; and long after he had learned all the other 



22 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

letters of the alphabet in the old-fashioned way, he proved 
wholly unable to remember "H" under any circumstances. 

Quite unknown to myself, I was, while a boy, under a 
hopeless disadvantage in studying nature. I was very 
near-sighted, so that the only things I could study were 
those I ran against or stumbled over. When I was about 
thirteen I was allowed to take lessons in taxidermy from a 
Mr. Bell, a tall, clean-shaven, white-haired old gentleman, 
as straight as an Indian, who had been a companion of 
Audubon's. He had a musty little shop, somewhat on the 
order of Mr. Venus's shop in "Our Mutual Friend," a little 
shop in which he had done very valuable work for science. 
This "vocational study," as I suppose it would be called by 
modern educators, spurred and directed my interest in col- 
lecting specimens for mounting and preservation. It was 
this summer that I got my first gun, and it puzzled me to 
find that my companions seemed to see things to shoot at 
which I could not see at all. One day they read aloud an 
advertisement in huge letters on a distant billboard, and I 
then realized that something was the matter, for not only 
was I unable to read the sign but I could not even see the 
letters. I spoke of this to my father, and soon afterwards 
got my first pair of spectacles, which literally opened an 
entirely new world to me. I had no idea how beautiful the 
world was until I got those spectacles. I had been a clumsy 
and awkward little boy, and while much of my clumsiness 
and awkwardness was doubtless due to general characteris- 
tics, a good deal of it was due to the fact that I could not 
see and yet was wholly ignorant that I was not seeing. The 
recollection of this experience gives me a keen sympathy 
with those who are trying in our public schools and else- 
where to remove the physical causes of deficiency in chil- 
dren, who are often unjustly blamed for being obstinate or 
unambitious, or mentally stupid. 

This same summer, too, I obtained various new books 
on mammals and birds, including the publications of Spencer 
Baird, for instance, and made an industrious book-study of 
the subject. I did not accomplish much in outdoor study 
because I did not get spectacles until late in the fall, a short 



BOYHOOD AND YOUTH 23 

time before I started with the rest of the family for a second 
trip to Europe. We were living at Dobbs Ferry, on the 
Hudson. My gun was a breech-loading, pin-iire double- 
barrel, of French manufacture. It was an excellent gun for 
a clumsy and often absent-minded boy. There was no 
spring to open it, and if the mechanism became rusty it 
could be opened with a brick without serious damage. 
When the cartridges stuck they could be removed in the 
same fashion. If they were loaded, however, the result was 
not always happy, and I tattooed myself with partially un- 
burned grains of powder more than once. 

When I was fourteen years old, in the winter of '72 and '73, 
I visited Europe for the second time, and this trip formed a 
really useful part of my education. We went to Egypt, 
journeyed up the Nile, traveled through the Holy Land and 
part of Syria, visited Greece and Constantinople ; and then 
we children spent the summer in a German family in Dres- 
den. My first real collecting as a student of natural history 
was done in Egypt during this journey. By this time I had 
a good working knowledge of American bird life from the 
superficially scientific standpoint. I had no knowledge of 
the ornithology of Egypt, but I picked up in Cairo a book 
by an English clergyman, whose name I have now forgotten, 
who described a trip up the Nile, and in an appendix to his 
volume gave an account of his bird collection. I wish I 
could remember the name of the author now, for I owe that 
book very much. Without it I should have been collect- 
ing entirely in the dark, whereas with its aid I could generally 
find out what the birds were. My first knowledge of Latin 
was obtained by learning the scientific names of the birds 
and mammals which I collected and classified by the aid of 
such books as this one. 

The birds I obtained up the Nile and in Palestine repre- 
sented merely the usual boy's collection. Some years after- 
ward I gave them, together with the other ornithological 
specimens I had gathered, to the Smithsonian Institution in 
Washington, and I think some of them also to the American 
Museum of Natural History in New York. I am told that 
the skins are to be found yet in both places and in other 



24 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



public collections. I doubt whether they have my original 
labels on them. With great pride the directors of the 
"Roosevelt Muesum," consisting of myself and the two 
cousins aforesaid, had printed a set of Roosevelt Museum 
labels in pink ink preliminary to what was regarded as my 
adventurous trip to Egypt. This bird-collecting gave what 
was really the chief zest to my Nile journey. I was old 
enough and had read enough to enjoy the temples and the 

desert scenery and the gen- 
eral feeling of romance ; 
but this in time would have 
palled if I had not also had 
the serious work of collect- 
ing and preparing my speci- 
mens. Doubtless the fam- 
ily had their moments of 
suffering — especially on 
one occasion when a well- 
meaning maid extracted 
from my taxidermist's out- 
fit the old tooth-brush 
with which I put on the 
skins the arsenical soap 
necessary for their preser- 
vation, partially washed 
it, and left it with the rest 
of my wash kit for my own 
personal use. I suppose 
that all growing boys tend to be grubby ; but the ornitho- 
logical small boy, or indeed the boy with the taste for 
natural history of any kind, is generally the very grubbiest 
of all. An added element in my case was the fact that while 
in Egypt I suddenly started to grow. As there were no 
tailors up the Nile, when I got back to Cairo I needed a 
new outfit. But there was one suit of clothes too good to 
throw away, which we kept for a "change," and which 
was known as my "Smike suit," because it left my wrists 
and ankles as bare as those of poor Smike himself. 

When we reached Dresden we younger children were left 




The proprietor of the " Roosevelt Mu- 
seum OF Natural History." 

Theodore Roosevelt at the age of ten. 



BOYHOOD AND YOUTH 



25 



to spend the summer in the house of Herr Alinckwitz, a 
member of either the Municipal or the Saxon Government 
— I have forgotten which. It was hoped that in this way 
we would acquire some knowledge of the German language 
and literature. They were the very kindest family imagi- 



a 






3 

4 A.) yi^^^^^^'^^^'^^ 






Z^^ 



'/,,) 



jj6i^^»*-, '\j 



ori^ 






"This, and subsequent natural ristories. were written down in blank books in 

SIMPLIFIED spelling, WHOLLY UNPREMEDITATED AND UNSCIENTIFIC." 

nable. I shall never forget the unwearied patience of the 
two daughters. The father and mother, and a shy, thin, 
student cousin who was living in the flat, were no less kind. 
Whenever I could get out into the country I collected speci- 
mens industriously and enlivened the household with hedge- 
hogs and other small beasts and reptiles which persisted in 
escaping from partially closed bureau drawers. The two 



26 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

sons were fascinating students from the University of Leip- 
sic, both of them belonging to dueling corps, and much 
scarred in consequence. One, a famous swordsman, was 
called Der Rothe Herzog (the Red Duke), and the other was 
nicknamed Herr Nasehorn (Sir Rhinoceros) because the tip 
of his nose had been cut off in a duel and sewn on again. 
I learned a good deal of German here, in spite of myself, 
and above all I became fascinated with the Nibelungenlied. 
German prose never became really easy to me in the sense 
that French prose did, but for German poetry I cared as 
much as for English poetry. Above all, I gained an im- 
pression of the German people which I never got over. 
From that time to this it would have been quite impossible 
to make me feel that the Germans were really foreigners. 
The affection, the Gemilthlichkeit (a quality which cannot 
be exactly expressed by any single English word), the ca- 
pacity for hard work, the sense of duty, the delight in study- 
ing literature and science, the pride in the new Germany, 
the more than kind and friendly interest in three strange 
children — all these manifestations of the German character 
and of German family life made a subconscious impression 
upon me which I did not in the least define at the time, but 
which is very vivid still forty years later. 

When I got back to America, at the age of fifteen, I began 
serious study to enter Harvard under Mr. Arthur Cutler, 
who later founded the Cutler School in New York. I could 
not go to school because I knew so much less than most 
boys of my age in some subjects and so much more in others. 
In science and history and geography and in unexpected 
parts of German and French I was strong, but lamentably 
weak in Latin and Greek and mathematics. My grandfather 
had made his summer home in Oyster Bay a number of years 
before, and my father now made Oyster Bay the summer 
home of his family also. Along with my college preparatory 
studies I carried on the work of a practical student of natural 
history. I worked with greater industry than either intelli- 
gence or success, and made very few additions to the sum 
of human knowledge ; but to this day certain obscure orni- 
thological publications may be found in which are recorded 



BOYHOOD AND YOUTH 27 

such items as, for instance, that on one occasion a fish-crow, 
and on another an Ipswich sparrow, were obtained by one 
Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., at Oyster Bay, on the shore of 
Long Island Sound. 

In the fall of 1876 I entered Harvard, graduating in 1880. 
I thoroughly enjoyed Harvard, and I am sure it did me 
good, but only in the general effect, for there was very 
little in my actual studies which helped me in after life. 
More than one of my own sons have already profited by 
their friendship with certain of their masters in school or 
college. I certainly profited by my friendship with one of 
my tutors, Mr. Cutler; and in Harvard I owed much to the 
professor of English, Mr. A. S. Hill. Doubtless through my 
own fault, I saw almost nothing of President Eliot and very 
little of the professors. I ought to have gained much more 
than I did gain from writing the themes and forensics. My 
failure to do so may have been partly due to my taking no 
interest in the subjects. Before I left Harvard I was already 
writing one or two chapters of a book I afterwards published 
on the Naval War of 18 12. Those chapters were so dry 
that they would have made a dictionary seem light reading 
by comparison. Still, they represented purpose and serious 
interest on my part, not the perfunctory effort to do well 
enough to get a certain mark ; and corrections of them by a 
skilled older man would have impressed me and have com- 
manded my respectful attention. But I was not sufficiently 
developed to make myself take an intelligent interest in some 
of the subjects assigned me — the character of the Gracchi, 
for instance. A very clever and studious lad would no 
doubt have done so, but I personally did not grow up to 
this particular subject until a good many years later. The 
frigate and sloop actions between the American and British 
sea-tigers of 1812 were much more within my grasp. I 
worked drearily at the Gracchi because I had to ; my con- 
scientious and much-to-be-pitied professor dragging me 
through the theme by main strength, with my feet firmly 
planted In dull and totally Idea-proof resistance. 

I had at the time no Idea of going Into public life, and I 
never studied elocution or practiced debating. This was a 



28 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

loss to me in one way. In another way It was not. Per- 
sonally I have not the slightest sympathy with debating 
contests in which each side is arbitrarily assigned a given 
proposition and told to maintain it without the least refer- 
ence to whether those maintaining it believe in it or not. 
I know that under our system this is necessary for lawyers, 
but I emphatically disbelieve in it as regards general dis- 
cussion of political, social, and industrial matters. What 
we need is to turn out of our colleges young men with ardent 
convictions on the side of the right ; not young men who 
can make a good argument for either right or wrong as their 
interest bids them. The present method of carrying on 
debates on such subjects as "Our Colonial Policy," or "The 
Need of a Navy," or "The Proper Position of the Courts in 
Constitutional Questions," encourages precisely the wrong 
attitude among those who take part in them. There is no 
effort to instill sincerity and intensity of conviction. On 
the contrary, the net result is to make the contestants feel 
that their convictions have nothing to do with their argu- 
ments. I am sorry I did not study elocution in college; 
but I am exceedingly glad that I did not take part in the 
type of debate in which stress is laid, not upon getting a 
speaker to think rightly, but on getting him to talk glibly 
on the side to which he is assigned, without regard either 
to what his convictions are or to what they ought to be. 

I was a reasonably good student in college, standing just 
within the first tenth of my class, if I remember rightly ; 
although I am not sure whether this means the tenth of the 
whole number that entered or of those that graduated. I 
was given a Phi Beta Kappa "key." Aly chief interests 
were scientific. When I entered college, I was devoted to 
out-of-doors natural history, and my ambition was to be a 
scientific man of the Audubon, or Wilson, or Baird, or 
Coues type — a man like Hart Merriam, or Frank Chap- 
man, or Hornaday, to-day. My father had from the earliest 
days instilled into me the knowledge that I was to work 
and to make my own way in the world, and I had always 
supposed that this meant that I must enter business. But 
in my freshman year (he died when I was a sophomore) he 



BOYHOOD AND YOUTH 29 

told me that if I wished to become a scientific man I could 
do so. He explained that I must be sure that I really in- 
tensely desired to do scientific work, because if I went into 
it I must make it a serious career ; that he had made enough 
money to enable me to take up such a career and do non- 
remunerative work of value if I intended to do the very best 
work there was in me; but that I must not dream of taking 
it up as a dilettante. He also gave me a piece of advice 
that I have always remembered, namely, that, if I was not 
going to earn money, I must ev'en things up by not spend- 
ing it. As he expressed it, I had to keep the fraction con- 
stant, and if I was not able to increase the numerator, then 
I must reduce the denominator. In other words, if I went 
into a scientific career, I must definitely abandon all thought 
of the enjoyment that could accompany a money-making 
career, and must find my pleasures elsewhere. 

After this conversation I fully intended to make science 
my life-work. I did not, for the simple reason that at that 
time Harvard, and I suppose our other colleges, utterly 
ignored the possibilities of the faunal naturalist, the outdoor 
naturalist and observer of nature. They treated biology 
as purely a science of the laboratory and the microscope, a 
science whose adherents were to spend their time in the 
study of minute forms of marine life, or else in section- 
cutting and the study of the tissues of the higher organisms 
under the microscope. This attitude was, no doubt, in part 
due to the fact that in most colleges then there was a not 
always intelligent copying of what was done in the great 
German universities. The sound revolt against super- 
ficiality of study had been carried to an extreme ; thorough- 
ness in minutiae as the only end of study had been erected 
into a fetish. There was a total failure to understand the 
great variety of kinds of work that could be done by natu- 
ralists, including what could be done by outdoor naturalists 
■ — the kind of work which Hart Merriam and his assistants 
in the Biological Survey have carried to such a high degree 
of perfection as regards North American mammals. In the 
entirely proper desire to be thorough and to avoid slipshod 
methods, the tendency was to treat as not serious, as un- 



30 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

scientific, any kind of work that was not carried on with 
laborious minuteness in the laboratory. My taste was 
specialized in a totally different direction, and I had no more 
desire or ability to be a microscopist and section-cutter 
than to be a mathematician. Accordingly I abandoned 
all thought of becoming a scientist. Doubtless this meant 
that I really did not have the intense devotion to science 
which I thought I had ; for, if I had possessed such devo- 
tion, I would have carved out a career for myself somehow 
without regard to discouragements. 

As regards political economy, I was of course while in 
college taught the laissez-faire doctrines — one of them 
being free trade — then accepted as canonical. Most 
American boys of my age were taught both by their sur- 
roundings and by their studies certain principles which were 
very valuable from the standpoint of National interest, and 
certain others which were very much the reverse. The 
political economists were not especially to blame for this ; 
it was the general attitude of the writers who wrote for us 
of that generation. Take my beloved Our Young Folks, 
the magazine of which I have already spoken, and which 
taught me much more than any of my text-books. Every- 
thing in this magazine instilled the individual virtues, and 
the necessity of character as the chief factor in any man's 
success — a teaching in which I now believe as sincerely as 
ever, for all the laws that the wit of man can devise will 
never make a man a worthy citizen unless he has within 
himself the right stuff, unless he has self-reliance, energy, 
courage, the power of insisting on his own rights and the 
sympathy that makes him regardful of the rights of others. 
All this individual morality I was taught by the books I 
read at home and the books I studied at Harvard. But 
there was almost no teaching of the need for collective 
action, and of the fact that in addition to, not as a sub- 
stitute for, individual responsibility, there is a collective re- 
sponsibility. Books such as Herbert Croly's "Promise of 
American Life" and Walter E. Weyl's "New Democracy" 
would generally at that time have been treated either as 
unintelligible or else as pure heresy. 



BOYHOOD AND YOUTH 31 

The teaching which I received was genuinely democratic 
in one way. It was not so democratic in another. I grew 
into manhood thoroughly imbued with the feeling that a 
man must be respected for what he made of himself. But 
I had also, consciously or unconsciously, been taught that 
socially and industrially pretty much the whole duty of 
the man lay in thus making the best of himself; that he 
should be honest in his dealings with others and charitable 
in the old-fashioned way to the unfortunate ; but that it 
was no part of his business to join with others in trying to 
make things better for the many by curbing the abnormal 
and excessive development of individualism in a few. Now 
I do not mean that this training was by any means all bad. 
On the contrary, the insistence upon individual responsi- 
bility was, and is, and always will be, a prime necessity. 
Teaching of the kind I absorbed from both my text-books 
and my surroundings is a healthy anti-scorbutic to the sen- 
timentality which by complacently excusing the individual 
for all his shortcomings would finally hopelessly weaken the 
spring of moral purpose. It also keeps alive that virile 
vigor for the lack of which in the average individual no 
possible perfection of law or of community action can ever 
atone. But such teaching, if not corrected by other teach- 
ing, means acquiescence in a riot of lawless business indi- 
vidualism which would be quite as destructive to real civili- 
zation as the lawless military individualism of the Dark 
Ages. I left college and entered the big world owing more 
than I can express to the training I had received, especially 
in my own home ; but with much else also to learn if I 
were to become really fitted to do my part in the work that 
lay ahead for the generation of Americans to which I be- 
longed. 



Bronze Cougar, by Alexander P. Proctor. 

Presented to Mr. Roosevelt by the "Tennis Cabinet." 



CHAPTER II 



THE VIGOR OF LIFE 



LOOKING back, a man really has a more objective 
feeling about himself as a child than he has about 
^ his father or mother. He feels as if that child 
were not the present he, individually, but an 
ancestor; just as much an ancestor as either of his parents. 
The saying that the child is the father to the man may be 
taken in a sense almost the reverse of that usually given 
to it. The child is father to the man in the sense that his 
individuality is separate from the individuality of the grown- 
up into which he turns. This is perhaps one reason why a 
man can speak of his childhood and early youth with a 
sense of detachment. 

Having been a sickly boy, with no natural bodily prow- 
ess, and having lived much at home, I was at first quite 
unable to hold my own when thrown into contact with 
other boys of rougher antecedents, I was nervous and 
timid. Yet from reading of the people I admired — rang- 
ing from the soldiers of Valley Forge, and Morgan's rifle- 
men, to the heroes of my favorite stories — and from hear- 
ing of the feats performed by my Southern forefathers and 
kinsfolk, and from knowing my father, I felt a great admira- 
tion for men who were fearless and who could hold their 
own in the world, and I had a great desire to be like them. 
Until I was nearly fourteen I let this desire take no more 
definite shape than day-dreams. Then an incident hap- 
pened that did me real good. Having an attack of asthma, 

32 



THE VIGOR OF LIFE 33 

I was sent off by myself to Moosehead Lake. On the stage- 
coach ride thither I encountered a couple of other boys 
who were about my own age, but very much more compe- 
tent and also much more mischievous. I have no doubt 
they were good-hearted boys, but they were boys ! They 
found that I was a foreordained and predestined victim, 
and industriously proceeded to make life miserable for me. 
The worst feature was that when I finally tried to fight 
them I discovered that either one singly could not only 
handle me with easy contempt, but handle me so as not 
to hurt me much and yet to prevent my doing any damage 
whatever in return. 

The experience taught me what probably no amount of 
good advice could have taught me. I made up my mind 
that I must try to learn so that I would not again be put in 
such a helpless position ; and having become quickly and 
bitterly conscious that I did not have the natural prow- 
ess to hold my own, I decided that I would try to supply 
its place by training. Accordingly, with my father's 
hearty approval, I started to learn to box. I was a 
painfully slow and awkward pupil, and certainly worked 
two or three years before I made any perceptible improve- 
ment whatever. My first boxing-master was John Long, 
an ex-prize-fighter. I can see his rooms now, with col- 
ored pictures of the fights between Tom Hyer and Yankee 
Sullivan, and Hecnan and Sayers, and other great events 
in the annals of the squared circle. On one occasion, to 
excite interest among his patrons, he held a series of "cham- 
pionship" matches for the different weights, the prizes 
being, at least in my own class, pewter mugs of a value, 
I should suppose, approximating fifty cents. Neither he 
nor I had any idea that I could do anything, but I was 
entered in the lightweight contest, in which it happened 
that I was pitted in succession against a couple of reedy 
striplings who were even worse than I was. Equally to 
their surprise and to my own, and to John Long's, I won, 
and the pewter mug became one of my most prized pos- 
sessions. I kept it, and alluded to it, and I fear bragged 
about it, for a number of years, and I only wish I knew 



34 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

where it was now. Years later I read an account of a little 
man who once in a fifth-rate handicap race won a worthless 
pewter medal and joyed in it ever after. Well, as soon as I 
read that story I felt that that little man and I were brothers. 

This was, as far as I remember, the only one of my ex- 
ceedingly rare athletic triumphs which would be worth 
relating. I did a good deal of boxing and wrestling in 
Harvard, but never attained to the first rank in either, 
even at my own weight. Once, in the big contests in the 
Gym, I got either into the finals or semi-finals, I forgot 
which ; but aside from this the chief part I played was 
to act as trial horse for some friend or classmate who did 
have a chance of distinguishing himself in the championship 
contests. 

I was fond of horseback-riding, but I took to it slowly 
and with difficulty, exactly as with boxing. It was a long 
time before I became even a respectable rider, and I never 
got much higher. I mean by this that I never became a 
first-flight man in the hunting field, and never even 
approached the bronco-busting class in the West. Any 
man, if he chooses, can gradually school himself to the 
requisite nerve, and gradually learn the requisite seat and 
hands, that will enable him to do respectably across country, 
or to perform the average work on a ranch. Of my ranch 
experiences I shall speak later. At intervals after leaving 
college I hunted on Long Island with the Meadowbrook 
hounds. Almost the only experience I ever had in this 
connection that was of any interest was on one occasion 
when I broke my arm. My purse did not permit me to 
own expensive horses. On this occasion I was riding an 
animal, a buggy horse originally, which its owner sold 
because now and then it insisted on thoughtfully lying 
down when in harness. It never did this under the sad- 
dle ; and when he turned it out to grass it would solemnly 
hop over the fence and get somewhere where it did not 
belong. The last trait was what converted it into a hunter. 
It was a natural jumper, although without any speed. 
On the hunt in question I got along very well until the 
pace winded my ex-buggy horse, and it turned a somersault 



THE VIGOR OF LIFE 35 

over a fence. When I got on it after the fall I found I 
could not use my left arm. I supposed it was merely a 
strain. The buggy horse was a sedate animal which I 
rode with a snaffle. So we pounded along at the tail of 
the hunt, and I did not appreciate that my arm was broken 
for three or four fences. Then we came to a big drop, and 
the jar made the bones slip past one another so as to throw 
the hand out of position. It did not hurt me at all, and 
as the horse was as easy to sit as a rocking-chair, I got in 
at the death. 

I think August Belmont was master of the hunt when the 
above incident occurred. I know he was master on another 
occasion on which I met with a mild adventure. On one 
of the hunts when I was out a man was thrown, dragged 
by one stirrup, and killed. In consequence I bought a pair 
of safety stirrups, which I used the next time I went out. 
Within five minutes after the run began I found that the 
stirrups were so very "safe" that they would not stay in 
at all. First one went off at one jump, and then the other 
at another jump — with a fall for me on each occasion. 
I hated to give up the fun so early, and accordingly finished 
the run without any stirrups. My horse never went as 
fast as on that run. Doubtless a first-class horseman can 
ride as well without stirrups as with them. But I was not 
a first-class horseman. When anything unexpected hap- 
pened, I was apt to clasp the solemn buggy horse firmly 
with my spurred heels, and the result was that he laid 
himself out to do his best in the way of galloping. He 
speedily found that, thanks to the snaffle bit, I could not 
pull him in, so when we came to a down grade he would 
usually put on steam. Then if there was a fence at the 
bottom and he checked at all, I was apt to shoot forward, 
and in such event we went over the fence in a way that 
reminded me of Leech's picture, in Punch, of Mr. Tom 
Noddy and his mare jumping a fence in the following order : 
Mr. Tom Noddy, I; his mare, II. However, I got in at 
the death this time also. 

I was fond of walking and climbing. As a lad I used 
to go to the north woods, in Maine, both in fall and winter. 



36 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

There I made life friends of two men, Will Dow and Bill 
Sewall : I canoed with them, and tramped through the woods 
with them, visiting the winter logging camps on snow-shoes. 
Afterward they were with me in the West. Will Dow is 
dead. Bill Sewall was collector of customs under me, on 
the Aroostook border. Except when hunting I never 
did any mountaineering save for a couple of conventional 
trips up the Matterhorn and the Jungfrau on one occasion 
when I was in Switzerland. 

I never did much with the shotgun, but I practiced a good 
deal with the rifle. I had a rifle range at Sagamore Hill, 
where I often took friends to shoot. Once or twice when 
I was visited by parties of released Boer prisoners, after 
the close of the South African War, they and I held shoot- 
ing matches together. The best man with both pistol and 
rifle who ever shot there was Stewart Edward White. 
Among the many other good men was a stanch friend. Baron 
Speck von Sternberg, afterwards German Ambassador at 
Washington during my Presidency. He was a capital 
shot, rider, and walker, a devoted and most efficient servant 
of Germany, who had fought with distinction in the Franco- 
German War when barely more than a boy; he was the hero 
of the story of "the pig dog" in Archibald Forbes's volume 
of reminiscences. It was he who first talked over with me 
the raising of a regiment of horse riflemen from among the 
ranchmen and cowboys of the plains. When Ambassador, 
the poor, gallant, tender-hearted fellow was dying of a 
slow and painful disease, so that he could not play with the 
rest of us, but the agony of his mortal illness never in the 
slightest degree interfered with his work. Among the 
other men who shot and rode and walked with me was 
Cecil Spring-Rice, who has just been appointed British 
Ambassador to the United States. He was my groomsman, 
my best man, when I was married — ^ at St. George's, 
Hanover Square, which made me feel as if I were living in 
one of Thackeray's novels. 

My own experience as regards marksmanship was much 
the same as my experience as regards horsemanship. There 
are men whose eye and hand are so quick and so sure that 




.w \^ 



Copyright by Cllnedinst. 

"Any man, if he chooses, can gradually school himself so as to do 
respectably across country." 



38 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

they achieve a perfection of marksmanship to which no 
practice will enable ordinary men to attain. There are 
other men who cannot learn to shoot with any accuracy at 
all. In between come the mass of men of ordinary abili- 
ties who, if they choose resolutely to practice, can by sheer 
industry and judgment make thehiselves fair rifle shots. 
The men who show this requisite industry and judgment 
can without special difficulty raise themselves to the second 
class of respectable rifle shots ; and it is to this class that I 
belong. But to have reached this point of marksmanship 
with the rifle at a target by no means implies ability to hit 
game in the field, especially dangerous game. All kinds 
of other qualities, moral and physical, enter into being a 
good hunter, and especially a good hunter after dangerous 
game, just as all kinds of other qualities in addition to skill 
with the rifle enter into being a good soldier. With dan- 
gerous game, after a fair degree of efficiency with the rifle 
has been attained, the prime requisites are cool judgment 
and that kind of nerve which consists in avoiding being 
rattled. Any beginner is apt to have "buck fever," and 
therefore no beginner should go at dangerous game. 

Buck fever means a state of intense nervous excitement 
which may be entirely divorced from timidity. It may 
aflFect a man the first time he has to speak to a large audi- 
ence just as it affects him the first time he sees a buck or 
goes into battle. What such a man needs is not courage 
but nerve control, cool-headedness. This he can get only 
by actual practice. He must, by custom and repeated 
exercise of self-mastery, get his nerves thoroughly under 
control. This is largely a matter of habit, in the sense of 
repeated efi^ort and repeated exercise of will power. If 
the man has the right stuflF in him, his will grows stronger 
and stronger with each exercise of it — and if he has not the 
right stuff in him he had better keep clear of dangerous 
game hunting, or indeed of any other form of sport or work 
in which there is bodily peril. 

After he has achieved the ability to exercise wariness 
and judgment and the control over his nerves which will 
make him shoot as well at the game as at a target^ he can begin 



THE VIGOR OF LIFE 39 

his essays at dangerous game hunting, and he will then 
find that it does not demand such abnormal prowess as 
the ousider is apt to imagine. A man who can hit a soda- 
water bottle at the distance of a few yards can brain a lion 
or a bear or an elephant at that distance, and if he cannot 
brain it when it charges he can at least bring it to a stand- 
still. All he has to do is to shoot as accurately as he would 
at a soda-water bottle ; and to do this requires nerve, at 
least as much as it does physical address. Having reached 
this point, the hunter must not imagine that he is war- 
ranted in taking desperate chances. There are degrees in 
proficiency ; and what is a warrantable and legitimate risk 
for a man to take when he has reached a certain grade of 
efficiency may be a foolish risk for him to take before he 
has reached that grade. A man who has reached the degree 
of proficiency indicated above is quite warranted in walking 
in at a lion at bay, in an open plain, to, say, within a hundred 
yards. If the lion has not charged, the man ought at that 
distance to knock him over and prevent his charging; and 
if the lion is already charging, the man ought at that dis- 
tance to be able to stop him. But the amount of prowess 
which warrants a man in relying on his ability to perform 
this feat does not by any means justify him in thinking 
that, for instance, he can crawl after a wounded lion into 
thick cover. I have known men of indifferent prowess to 
perform this latter feat successfully, but at least as often 
they have been unsuccessful, and in these cases the result has 
been unpleasant. The man who habitually follows wounded 
lions into thick cover must be a hunter of the highest skill, 
or he can count with certainty on an ultimate mauling. 

The first two or three bucks I ever saw gave me buck 
fever badly, but after I had gained experience with ordinary 
game I never had buck fever at all with dangerous game. 
In my case the overcoming of buck fever was the result 
of conscious effort and a deliberate determination to over- 
come it. More happily constituted men never have to make 
this determined effort at all — which may perhaps show 
that the average man can profit more from my experiences 
than he can from those of the exceptional man. 



40 TPIEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

I have shot only five kinds of animals which can fairly 
be called dangerous game — that is, the lion, elephant, 
rhinoceros, and buffalo in Africa, and the big grizzly bear 
a quarter of a century ago in the Rockies. Taking into 
account not only my own personal experience, but the 
experiences of many veteran hunters, I regard all the four 
African animals, but especially the lion, elephant, and 
buffalo, as much more dangerous than the grizzly. As it 
happened, however, the only narrow escape I person- 
ally ever had was from a grizzly, and in Africa the 
animal killed closest to me as it was charging was a rhi- 
noceros — all of which goes to show that a man must not 
generalize too broadly from his own personal experiences. 
On the whole, I think the lion the most dangerous of all 
these five animals ; that is, I think that, if fairly hunted, there 
is a larger percentage of hunters killed or mauled for a given 
number of lions killed than for a given number of any one 
of the other animals. Yet I personally had no difficulties 
with lions. I twice killed lions which were at bay and just 
starting to charge, and I killed a heavy-maned male while 
it was in full charge. But in each instance I had plenty of 
leeway, the animal being so far ofi^ that even if my bullet 
had not been fatal I should have had time for a couple more 
shots. The African buffalo is undoubtedly a dangerous 
beast, but it happened that the few that I shot did not 
charge. A bull elephant, a vicious "rogue," which had 
been killing people in the native villages, did charge before 
being shot at. My son Kermit and I stopped it at forty 
yards. Another bull elephant, also unwounded, which 
charged, nearly got me, as I had just fired both cartridges 
from my heavy double-barreled rifle in killing the bull 
I was after — the first wild elephant I had ever seen. The 
second bull came through the thick brush to my left like a 
steam plow through a light snowdrift, everything snap- 
ping before his rush, and was so near that he could have 
hit me with his trunk. I slipped past him behind a tree. 
People have asked me how I felt on this occasion. My 
answer has always been that I suppose I felt as most men 
of like experience feel on such occasions. At such a moment 



THE VIGOR OF LIFE 45 

to which I answered, "Well, I am not. Now straighten 
your legs and let your rifle go to the ground " He re- 
monstrated, saying the rifle would go off, and I told him 
to let it go off. However, he straightened his legs in such 
fashion that it came to the ground without a jar. I then 
made him move back, and picked up the rifle. By this time 
he was quite sober, and really did not seem angry, looking at 
me quizzically. He told me that if I would give him back 
his rifle, he would call it quits and we could go on together. 
I did not think it best to trust him, so I told him that our 
hunt was pretty well through, anyway, and that I would go 
home. There was a blasted pine on the trail, in plain view of 
the camp, about a mile off, and I told him that I would 
leave his rifle at that blasted pine if I could see him in camp, 
but that he must not come after me, for if he did I should 
assume that it was with hostile intent and would shoot. 
He said he had no intention of coming after me ; and as he 
was very much crippled with rheumatism, I did not believe 
he would do so. 

Accordingly I took the little mare, with nothing but some 
flour, bacon, and tea, and my bed-roll, and started off. 
At the blasted pine I looked round, and as I could see him 
in camp, I left his rifle there. I then traveled till dark, and 
that night, for the only time in my experience, I used in 
camping a trick of the old-time trappers in the Indian days. 
I did not believe I would be followed, but still it was not pos- 
sible to be sure, so, after getting supper, while my pony fed 
round, I left the fire burning, repacked the mare and pushed 
ahead until it literally became so dark that I could not see. 
Then I picketed the mare, slept where I was without a fire 
until the first streak of dawn, and then pushed on for a 
couple of hours before halting to take breakfast and to let 
the little mare have a good feed. No plainsman needs to 
be told that a man should not lie near a fire if there is danger 
of an enemy creeping up on him, and that above all a man 
should not put himself in a position where he can be am- 
bushed at dawn. On this second day I lost the trail, and 
toward nightfall gave up the effort to find it, camped where 
I was, and went out to shoot a grouse for supper. It was 



46 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

while hunting in vain for a grouse that I came on the bear 
and killed it as above described. 

When I reached the settlement and went into the store, 
the storekeeper identified me by remarking: "You're the 
tenderfoot that old Hank was trundling, ain't you ?" I 
admitted that I was. A good many years later, after I had 
been elected Vice-President, I went on a cougar hunt in 
northwestern Colorado with Johnny Goff, a famous hunter 
and mountain man. It was midwinter. I was rather 
proud of my achievements, and pictured myself as being 
known to the few settlers in the neighborhood as a success- 
ful mountain-lion hunter. I could not help grinning when 
I found out that they did not even allude to me as the Vice- 
President-elect, let alone as a hunter, but merely as "Johnny 
Goff's tourist." 

Of course during the years when I was most busy at serious 
work I could do no hunting, and even my riding was of a 
decorous kind. But a man whose business is sedentary 
should get some kind of exercise if he wishes to keep himself 
in as good physical trim as his brethren who do manual 
labor. When I worked on a ranch, I needed no form of 
exercise except my work, but when I worked in an office the 
case was different. A couple of summers I played polo 
with some of my neighbors. I shall always believe we played 
polo in just the right way for middle-aged men with stables 
of the general utility order. Of course it was polo which 
was chiefly of interest to ourselves, the only onlookers being 
the members of our faithful families. My two ponies were 
the only occupants of my stable except a cart-horse. My 
wife and I rode and drove them, and they were used for 
household errands and for the children, and for two after- 
noons a week they served me as polo ponies. Polo is a good 
game, infinitely better for vigorous men than tennis or golf 
or anything of that kind. There is all the fun of football, 
with the horse thrown in ; and if only people would be willing 
to play it in simple fashion it would be almost as much 
within their reach as golf. But at Oyster Bay our great 
and permanent amusements were rowing and sailing ; I 
do not care for the latter, and am fond of the former. I 



THE VIGOR OF LIFE 47 

suppose It sounds archaic, but I cannot help thinking that 
the people with motor boats miss a great deal. If they 
would only keep to rowboats or canoes, and use oar or pad- 
dle themselves, they would get infinitely more benefit than 
by having their work done for them by gasoline. But I 
rarely took exercise merely as exercise. Primarily I took it 
because I liked it. Play should never be allowed to interfere 
with work ; and a life devoted merely to play is, of all forms 
of existence, the most dismal. But the joy of life is a 
very good thing, and while work is the essential in it, play 
also has its place. 

When obliged to live in cities, I for a long time found that 
boxing and wrestling enabled me to get a good deal of exer- 
cise in condensed and attractive form. I was reluctantly 
obliged to abandon both as I grew older. I dropped the 
wrestling earliest. When I became Governor, the cham- 
pion middleweight wrestler of America happened to be in 
Albany, and I got him to come round three or four after- 
noons a week. Incidentally I may mention that his pres- 
ence caused me a difficulty with the Comptroller, who 
refused to audit a bill I put in for a wrestling-mat, explain- 
ing that I could have a billiard-table, billiards being recog- 
nized as a proper Gubernatorial amusement, but that a 
wrestling-mat symbolized something unusual and unheard 
of and could not be permitted. The middleweight cham- 
pion was of course so much better than I was that he could 
not only take care of himself but of me too and see that I 
was not hurt — for wrestling is a much more violent amuse- 
ment than boxing. But after a couple of months he had to 
go away, and he left as a substitute a good-humored, stal- 
wart professional oarsman. The oarsman turned out to 
know very little about wrestling. He could not even take 
care of himself, not to speak of me. By the end of our 
second afternoon one of his long ribs had been caved in and 
two of my short ribs badly damaged, and my left shoulder- 
blade so nearly shoved out of place that it creaked. He 
was nearly as pleased as I was when I told him I thought 
we would "vote the war a failure" and abandon wrestling. 
After that I took up boxing again. While President I 



48 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

used to box with some of the aides, as well as play single- 
stick with General Wood. After a few years I had to aban- 
don boxing as well as wrestling, for in one bout a young 
captain of artillery cross-countered me on the eye, and the 
blow smashed the little blood-vessels. Fortunately it was 
my left eye, but the sight has been dim ever since, and if 
it had been the right eye I should have been entirely unable 
to shoot. Accordingly I thought it better to acknowledge 
that I had become an elderly man and would have to 
stop boxing. I then took up jiu-jitsu for a year or two. 

When I was in the Legislature and was working very hard, 
with little chance of getting out of doors, all the exercise I 
got was boxing and wrestling. A young fellow turned up 
who was a second-rate prize-fighter, the son of one of my 
old boxing teachers. For several weeks I had him come 
round to my rooms in the morning to put on the gloves with 
me for half an hour. Then he suddenly stopped, and some 
days later I received a letter of woe from him from the 
jail. I found that he was by profession a burglar, and merely 
followed boxing as the amusement of his lighter moments, 
or when business was slack. 

Naturally, being fond of boxing, I grew to know a good 
many prize-fighters, and to most of those I knew I grew 
genuinely attached. I have never been able to sympathize 
with the outcry against prize-fighters. The only objection I 
have to the prize ring is the crookedness that has attended 
its commercial development. Outside of this I regard box- 
ing, whether professional or amateur, as a first-class sport, 
and I do not regard it as brutalizing. Of course matches can 
be conducted under conditions that make them brutalizing. 
But this is true of football games and of most other rough 
and vigorous sports. Most certainly prize-fighting is not 
half as brutalizing or demoralizing as many forms of big 
business and of the legal work carried on in connection with 
big business. Powerful, vigorous men of strong animal 
development must have some way in which their animal 
spirits can find vent. When I was Police Commissioner I 
found (and Jacob Riis will back me up in this) that the 
establishment of a boxing club in a tough neighborhood 



THE VIGOR OF LIFE 49 

always tended to do away with knifing and gun-fighting 
among the young fellows who would otherwise have been in 
murderous gangs. Alany of these j'oung fellows were not 
naturally criminals at all, but they had to have some outlet 
for their activities. In the same way I have always regarded 
boxing as a first-class sport to encourage in the Young Men's 
Christian Association. I do not like to see young Christians 
with shoulders that slope like a champagne bottle. Of 
course boxing shoulci be encouraged in the army and navy. 
I was first drawn to two na\'al chaplains, Fathers Chidwick 
and Rainey, by finding that each of them had bought half 
a dozen sets of boxing-gloves and encouraged their crews in 
boxing. 

When I was Police Commissioner, I heartily approved 
the eflFort to get boxing clubs started in New York on a 
clean basis. Later I was reluctantly obliged to come to the 
conclusion that the prize ring had become hopelessly debased 
and demoralized, and as Governor I aided in the passage 
of and signed the bill putting a stop to professional boxing 
for money. This was because some of the prize-fighters 
themselves were crooked, while the crowd of hangers-on 
who attended and made up and profited by the matches 
had placed the whole business on a basis of commercialism 
and brutality that was intolerable. I shall always maintain 
that boxing contests themselves make good, healthy sport. 
It is idle to compare them with bull-fighting ; the torture and 
death of the wretched horses in bull-fighting is enough of 
itself to blast the sport, no matter how great the skill and 
prowess shown by the bull-fighters. Any sport in which 
the death and torture of animals is made to furnish pleasure 
to the spectators is debasing. There should always be the 
opportunity provided in a glove fight or bare-fist fight to 
stop it when one competitor is hopelessly outclassed or too 
badly hammered. But the men who take part in these 
fights are hard as nails, and it is not worth while to feel 
sentimental about their receiving punishment which 
as a matter of fact they do not mind. Of course the men 
who look on ought to be able to stand up with the gloves, 
or without them, themselves ; I have scant use for the type 



so THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

of sportsmanship which consists merely in looking on at the 
feats of some one else. 

Some as good citizens as I know are or were prize-fighters. 
Take Mike Donovan, of New York. He and his 
family represent a type of American citizenship of which 
we have a right to be proud. Mike is a devoted temper- 
ance man, and can be relied upon for every movement 
in the interest of good citizenship. I was first intimately 
thrown with him when I was Police Commissioner. One 
evening he and I — both in dress suits — attended a 
temperance meeting of Catholic societies. It culminated in 
a lively set-to between myself and a Tammany Senator 
who was a very good fellow, but whose ideas of temperance 
differed radically from mine, and, as the event proved, 
from those of the majority of the meeting. Mike evi- 
dently regarded himself as my backer — he was sitting on 
the platform beside me — and I think felt as pleased and 
interested as if the set-to had been physical instead of 
merely verbal. Afterwards I grew to know him well both 
while I was Governor and while I was President, and many 
a time he came on and boxed with me. 

Battling Nelson was another stanch friend, and he and 
I think alike on most questions of political and industrial 
life ; although he once expressed to me some commisera- 
tion because, as President, I did not get anything like the 
money return for my services that he aggregated during 
the same term of years in the ring. Bob Fitzsimmons was 
another good friend of mine. He has never forgotten his 
early skill as a blacksmith, and among the things that I 
value and always keep in use is a penholder made by Bob 
out of a horseshoe, ^th an inscription saying that it is 
"Made for and presented to President Theodore Roosevelt 
by his friend and admirer, Robert Fitzsimmons." I have 
for a long time had the friendship of John L. Sullivan, than 
whom in his prime no better man ever stepped into the ring. 
He is now a Massachusetts farmer. John used occasionally 
to visit me at the White House, his advent always causing 
a distinct flutter among the waiting Senators and Congress- 
men. When I went to Africa he presented me with a gold- 



THE VIGOR OF LIFE 51 

mounted rabbit's foot for luck. I carried It through my 
African trip ; and I certainly had good luck. 

On one occasion one of my prize-fighting friends called 
on me at the White House on business. He explained that 
he wished to see me alone, sat down opposite me, and put 
a very expensive cigar on the desk, saying, "Have a cigar." 
I thanked him and said I did not smoke, to which he re- 
sponded, "Put It In your pocket." He then added, "Take 
another; put both In your pocket." This I accord- 
ingly did. Having thus shown at the outset the 
necessary formal courtesy, my visitor, an old and valued 
friend, proceeded to explain that a nephew of his had 
enlisted in the Marine Corps, but had been absent without 
leave, and was threatened with dishonorable discharge on 
the ground of desertion. My visitor, a good citizen and a 
patriotic American, was stung to the quick at the thought 
of such an Incident occurring in his family, and he explained 
to me that it must not occur, that there must not be the 
disgrace to the family, although he would be delighted to 
have the oflFender "handled rough" to teach him a needed 
lesson ; he added that he wished I would take him and handle 
him myself, for he knew that I would see that he "got all 
that was coming to him." Then a look of pathos came into 
his eyes, and he explained : "That boy I just cannot under- 
stand. He was my sister's favorite son, and I always took 
a special interest In him myself. I did my best to bring 
him up the way he ought to go. But there was just nothing 
to be done with him. His tastes were naturally low. He 
took to music !" What form this debasing taste for music 
assumed I did not Inquire ; and I was able to grant my 
friend's wish. 

While In the White House I always tried to get a couple 
of hours' exercise In the afternoons — sometimes tennis, 
more often riding, or else a rough cross-country walk, 
perhaps down Rock Creek, which was then as wild as a 
stream In the White Mountains, or on the Virginia side along 
the Potomac. My companions at tennis or on these rides 
and walks we gradually grew to style the Tennis Cabinet; 
and then we extended the term to take In many of my old- 



52 THEODORE ROOSEVELT -AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

time Western friends such as Ben Daniels, Seth Bullock, 
Luther Kelly, and others who had taken part with me 
in more serious outdoor adventures than walking and riding 
for pleasure. Most of the men who were oftenest with me 
on these trips — men like Major-General Leonard Wood ; 
or Major-General Thomas Henry Barry ; or Presley Marion 
Rixey, Surgeon-General of the Navy ; or Robert Bacon, 
who was afterwards Secretary of State ; or James Garfield, 
who was Secretary of the Interior; or Gifford Pinchot, 
who was chief of the Forest Service — • were better men 
physically than I was ; but I could ride and walk well enough 
for us all thoroughly to enjoy it. Often, especially in the 
winters and early springs, we would arrange for a point 
to point walk, not turning aside for anything — • for instance, 
swimming Rock Creek or even the Potomac if it came in 
our way. Of course under such circumstances we had to 
arrange that our return to Washington should be when it 
was dark, so that our appearance might scandalize no one. 
On several occasions we thus swam Rock Creek in the 
early spring when the ice was floating thick upon it. If we 
swam the Potomac, we usually took off our clothes. I 
remember one such occasion when the French Ambassador, 
Jusserand, who was a member of the Tennis Cabinet, was 
along, and, just as we were about to get in to swim, some- 
body said, "Mr. Ambassador, Mr. Ambassador, you haven't 
taken oflF your gloves," to which he promptly responded, 
"I think I will leave them on; we might meet ladies!" 
We liked Rock Creek for these walks because we could do 
so much scrambling and climbing along the cliffs ; there was 
almost as much climbing when we walked down the Potomac 
to Washington from the Virginia end of the Chain Bridge. 
I would occasionally take some big-game friend from abroad, 
Selous or St. George Littledale or Captain Radclyffe or 
Paul Niedicke, on these walks. Once I invited an entire 
class of officers who were attending lectures at the War 
College to come on one of these walks ; I chose a route which 
gave us the hardest climbing along the rocks and the deepest 
crossings of the creek ; and my army friends enjoyed it hugely 
— being the right sort, to a man. 





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'Once I invited an entire class of officers who were attending lectures at 
THE War College, to come on one of these walks. I chose a route which 

GAVE us the hardest CLIMBING ALONG THE ROCKS AND THE DEEPEST CROSSING OF 
the CREEK, AND MY ARMY FRIENDS ENJOYED IT HUGELY — BEING THE RIGHT SORT, TO 
A MAN," 



54 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

On March i, 1909, three days before leaving the Presi- 
dency, various members of the Tennis Cabinet lunched 
with me at the White House. "Tennis Cabinet" was an 
elastic term, and of course many who ought to have been 
at the lunch were, for one reason or another, away from 
Washington ; but, to make up for this, a goodly number of 
out-of-town honorary members, so to speak, were present 
■ — ■ for instance, Seth Bullock ; Luther Kelly, better known 
as Yellowstone Kelly in the days when he was an army scout 
against the Sioux ; and Abernathy, the wolf-hunter. At the 
end of the lunch Seth Bullock suddenly reached forward, 
swept aside a mass of flowers which made a centerpiece on 
the table, and revealed a bronze cougar by Proctor, which 
was a parting gift to me. The lunch party and the cougar 
were then photographed on the lawn. 

Some of the younger officers who were my constant 
companions on these walks and rides pointed out to me the 
condition of utter physical worthlessness into which certain 
of the elder ones had permitted themselves to lapse, and the 
very bad effect this would certainly have if ever the army 
were called into service. I then looked into the matter for 
myself, and was really shocked at what I found. Many 
of the older officers were so unfit physically that their con- 
dition would have excited laughter, had it not been so serious, 
to think that they belonged to the military arm of the 
Government. A cavalry colonel proved unable to keep 
his horse at a smart trot for even half a mile, when I visited 
his post ; a Major-General proved afraid even to let his horse 
canter, when he went on a ride with us ; and certain other- 
wise good men proved as unable to walk as if they had been 
sedentary brokers. I consulted with men like Major- 
Generals Wood and Bell, who were themselves of fine phy- 
sique, with bodies fit to meet any demand. It was late in 
my administration ; and we deemed it best only to make a 
beginning — experience teaches the most inveterate reformer 
how hard it is to get a totally non-military nation to accept 
seriously any military improvement. Accordingly, I merely 
issued directions that each officer should prove his ability 
to walk fifty miles, or ride one hundred, in three days. 



THE VIGOR OF LIFE 55 

This is, of course, a test which many a healthy middle- 
aged woman would be able to meet. But a large portion of 
the press adopted the view that it was a bit of capricious 
tyranny on my part; and a considerable number of elderly 
officers, with desk rather than field experience, intrigued 
with their friends in Congress to have the order annulled. 
So one day I took a ride of a little over one hundred miles 
myself, in company with Surgeon-General Rixey and two 
other officers. The \'irginia roads were frozen and in ruts, 
and in the afternoon and evening there was a storm of snow 
and sleet ; and when it had been thus experimentally shown, 
under unfavorable conditions, how easy it was to do in one 
day the task for which the army officers were allowed three 
days, all open objection ceased. But some bureau chiefs 
still did as much underhanded work against the order as 
they dared, and it was often difficult to reach them. In 
the Marine Corps Captain Leonard, who had lost an arm 
at Tientsin, with two of his lieutenants did the fifty miles 
in one day ; for they were vigorous young men, who laughed 
at the idea of treating a fifty-mile walk as over-fatiguing. 
Well, the Navy Department officials rebuked them, and 
made them take the walk over again in three days, on the 
ground that taking it in one day did not comply with the 
regulations ! This seems unbelievable ; but Leonard assures 
me it is true. He did not inform me at the time, being 
afraid to "get in wrong" with his permanent superiors. 
If I had known of the order, short work would have been 
made of the bureaucrat who issued it.' 

' One of our best naval ofRcers sent me the following letter, after the above 
had appeared : — 

"I note in your Autobiography now being published in the Outlook that you 
refer to the reasons which led you to establish a physical test for the Army, and to 
the action you took (your loo-mile ride) to prevent the test being abolished. 
Doubtless you did not know the following facts : 

" I . The first annual navy test of 50 miles in three days was subsequently reduced 
to 25 miles in two days in each quarter. 

" 2. This was further reduced to 10 miles each month, which is the present 'test,' 
and there is danger lest even this utterly insufficient test be abolished. 

" I enclose a copy of a recent letter to the Surgeon General which will show our 
present deplorable condition and the worse condition into which we are slipping 
back. 

"The original test of 50 miles in three days did a very great deal of good. It 



56 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

In no country with an army worth calling such is there a 
chance for a man physically unfit to stay in the service. 

decreased by thousands of dollars the money expended on street car fare, and by a 
much greater sum the amount expended over the bar. It eliminated a number of 
the wholly unfit; it taught officers to walk; it forced them to learn the care of 
their feet and that of their men; and it improved their general health and was 
rapidly forming a taste for physical exercise." 

The enclosed letter ran in part as follows : — 

" I am returning under separate cover ' The Soldier's Foot and the Military Shoe.' 

"The book contains knowledge of a practical character that is valuable for the 

men who HAVE TO MARCH, WHO HAVE SUFFERED FROM FOOT 

TROUBLES, AND WHO MUST AVOID THEM IN ORDER TO ATTAIN 

EFFICIENCY. 

"The words in capitals express, according to my idea, the gist of the whole 
matter as regards military men. 

"The army officer whose men break down on test gets a black eye. The one 
whose men show efficiency in this respect gets a bouquet. 

"To such men the book is invaluable. There is no danger that they will neglect 
it. They will actually learn it, for exactly the same reasons that our fellows learn 
the gunnery instructions — or did learn them before they were withdrawn and 
burned. 

"B U T, I have not been able to interest a single naval officer in this fine book. 
They will look at the pictures and say it is a good book, but they won't read it. 
The marine officers, on the contrary, are very much interested, because they have 
to teach their men to care for their feet and they must know how to care for their 
own. But the naval officers feel no such necessity, simply because their men do not 
have to demonstrate their efficiency by practice marches, and they themselves do 
not have to do a stunt that will show up their own ignorance and inefficiency in the 
matter. 

"For example, some time ago I was talking with some chaps about shoes — the 
necessity of having them long enough and wide enough, etc., and one of them said : 
'I have no use for such shoes, as I never walk except when I have to, and any old 
shoes do for the lo-mile-a-month stunt,' so there you are ! 

"When the first test was ordered, Edmonston (Washington shoe man) told me 
that he sold more real walking shoes to naval officers in three months than he had 
in the three preceding years. I know three officers who lost both big-toe nails 
after the first test, and another who walked nine miles in practice with a pair of 
heavy walking shoes that were too small and was laid up for three days — could not 
come to the office. I know plenty of men who after the first test had to borrow 
shoes from larger men until their feet 'went down' to their normal size. 

"This test may have been a bit too strenuous for old hearts (of men who had 
never taken any exercise), but it was excellent as a matter of instruction and train- 
ing of handling feet — and in an emergency (such as we soon may have In Mexico) 
sound hearts are not much good if the feet won't stand. 

"However, the 25-mile test in two days each quarter answered the same pur- 
pose, for the reason that 12^ miles will produce sore feet with bad shoes, and sore 
feet and lame muscles even with good shoes, if there has been no practice marching. 

"Itwasthenecessitvofdoingi2^ MORE MILES ON THE SECOND DAY 
WITH SORE feet' AND LAME MUSCLES that made 'em sit up and take 
notice — made 'em practice walking, made 'em avoid street cars, buy proper 
shoes, show some curiosity about sox and the care of the feet in general. 



THE VIGOR OF LIFE 57 

Our countrymen should understand that every army officer 
— and every marine officer — ought to be summarily removed 
from the service unless he is able to undergo far severer 
tests than those which, as a beginning, I imposed. To 
follow any other course is to put a premium on slothful 
incapacity, and to do the gravest wrong to the Nation. 
I have mentioned all these experiences, and I could men- 
lion scores of others, because out of them grew my philos- 
ophy — perhaps they were in part caused by my philos- 
ophy — of bodily vigor as a method of getting that vigor 
of soul without which vigor of the body counts for nothing. 
The dweller in cities has less chance than the dweller in the 
country to keep his body sound and vigorous. But he can 
do so, if only he will take the trouble. Any young lawyer, 

"All tiiis passed out with the introduction of the last test of lo miles a month. 
As one fellow said : 'I can do that in sneakers' — but he couldn't if the second day 
involved a tramp on the sore feet. 

"The point is that whereas formerly officers had to practice walking a bit and 
give some attention to proper footgear, now they don't have to, and the natural 
consequence is that they don't do it. 

"There are plenty of officers who do not walk any more than is necessary to 
reach a street car that will carry them from their residences to their offices. Some 
who have motors do not do so much. They take no exercise. They take cock- 
tails instead and are getting beefy and 'ponchy,' and something should be done to 
remedy this state of affairs. 

"It would not be necessary if service opinion required officers so to order their 
lives that it would be common knowledge that they were 'hard,' in order to avoid 
the danger of being selected out. 

"We have no such service opinion, and it is not in process of formation. On the 
contrary, it is known that the 'Principal Dignitaries' unanimously advised the 
Secretary to abandon all physical tests. He, a civilian, was wise enough not to 
take the advice. 

" I would like to see a test established that would oblige officers to take sufficient 
exercise to pass it without inconvenience. For the reasons given above, 20 miles 
in two days every other month would do the business, while 10 miles each month 
does not touch it, simply because nobody has to walk on 'next day' feet. As for 
the proposed test of so many hours 'exercise' a week, the flat foots of the pendulous 
belly muscles are delighted. They are looking into the question of pedometers, 
and will hang one of these on their wheezy chests and let it count every shuffiing 
step they take out of doors. 

"If we had an adequate test throughout 20 years, there would at the end of 
that time be few if any sacks of blubber at the upper end of the list; and service 
opinion against that sort of thing would be established." 

These tests were kept during my administration. They were afterwards aban- 
doned ; not through perversity or viciousness ; but through weakness, and inability 
to understand the need of preparedness in advance, if the emergencies of war are 
to be properly met, when, or if, they arrive. 



58 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

shopkeeper, or clerk, or shop-assistant can keep himself in 
good condition if he tries. Some of the best men who have 
ever served under me in the National Guard and in my regi- 
ment were former clerks or floor-walkers. Why, Johnny 
Hayes, the Marathon victor, and at one time world cham- 
pion, one of my valued friends and supporters, was a floor- 
walker in Bloomingdale's big department store. Surely 
with Johnny Hayes as an example, any young man in a 
city can hope to make his body all that a vigorous man's 
body should be. 

I once made a speech to which I gave the title "The 
Strenuous Life." Afterwards I published a volume of 
essays with this for a title. There were two translations of 
it which always especially pleased me. One was by a 
Japanese officer who knew English well, and who had car- 
ried the essay all through the Manchurian campaign, and 
later translated it for the benefit of his countrymen. The 
other was by an Italian lady, whose brother, an officer in 
the Italian army who had died on duty in a foreign land, 
had also greatly liked the article and carried it round with 
him. In translating the title the lady rendered it in Italian 
as Vigor di Vita. I thought this translation a great improve- 
ment on the original, and have always wished that I had 
myself used "The Vigor of Life" as a heading to indicate what 
I was trying to preach, instead of the heading I actually 
did use. 

There are two kinds of success, or rather two kinds of 
ability displayed in the achievement of success. There is, 
first, the success either in big things or small things which 
comes to the man who has in him the natural power to do 
what no one else can do, and what no amount of training, 
no perseverance or will power, will enable any ordinary man 
to do. This success, of course, like every other kind of suc- 
cess, may be on a very big scale or on a small scale. The 
quality which the man possesses may be that which enables 
him to run a hundred yards in nine and three-fifths seconds, 
or to play ten separate games of chess at the same time blind- 
folded, or to add five columns of figures at once without 
effort, or to write the"Ode to a Grecian Urn," or to deliverthe 



THE VIGOR OF LIFE 59 

Gettysburg speech, or to show the ability of Frederick at 
Leuthen or Nelson at Trafalgar. No amount of training 
of body or mind would enable any good ordinary man to 
perform any one of these feats. Of course the proper per- 
formance of each implies much previous study or training, 
but in no one of them is success to be attained save by the 
altogether exceptional man who has in him the something 
additional which the ordinary man does not have. 

This is the most striking kind of success, and it can be 
attained only by the man who has in him the quality which 
separates him in kind no less than in degree from his fellows. 
But much the commoner type of success in every walk of 
life and in every species of effort is that which comes to the 
man who differs from his fellows not by the kind of quality 
which he possesses but by the degree of development which 
he has given that quality. This kind of success is open to 
a large number of persons, if only they seriously determine 
to achieve it. It is the kind of success which is open to the 
average man of sound body and fair mind, who has no 
remarkable mental or physical attributes, but who gets just 
as much as possible in the way of work out of the aptitudes 
that he does possess. It is the only kind of success that is 
open to most of us. Yet some of the greatest successes in 
history have been those of this second class — when I call 
it second class I am not running it down in the least, I am 
merely pointing out that it differs in kind from the first class. 
To the average man it is probably more useful to study this 
second type of success than to study the first. From the 
study of the first he can learn inspiration, he can get uplift 
and lofty enthusiasm. From the study of the second he can, 
if he chooses, find out how to win a similar success himself. 

I need hardly say that all the successes I have ever won 
have been of the second type. I never won anything with- 
out hard labor and the exercise of my best judgment and care- 
ful planning and working long in advance. Having been 
a rather sickly and awkward boy, I was as a young man at 
first both nervous and distrustful of my own prowess. I 
had to train myself painfully and laboriously not merely 
as regards my body but as regards my soul and spirit. 



6o THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

When a boy I read a passage in one of Marryat's books 
which always impressed me. In this passage the captain 
of some small British man-of-war is explaining to the hero 
how to acquire the quality of fearlessness. He says that at 
the outset almost every man is frightened when he goes into 
action, but that the course to follow is for the man to keep 
such a grip on himself that he can act just as if he was not 
frightened. After this is kept up long enough it changes from 
pretense to reality, and the man does in very fact become fear- 
less by sheer dint of practicing fearlessness when he does not 
feel it. (I am using my own language, not Marryat's.) 
This was the theory upon which I went. There were all 
kinds of things of which I was afraid at first, ranging from 
grizzly bears to "mean" horses and gun-fighters; but by 
acting as if I was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid. 
Most men can have the same experience if they choose. 
They will first learn to bear themselves well in trials which 
they anticipate and which they school themselves in advance 
to meet. After a while the habit will grow on them, and 
they will behave well in sudden and unexpected emer- 
gencies which come upon them unawares. 

It is of course much pleasanter if one is naturally fearless, 
and I envy and respect the men who are naturally fearless. 
But it is a good thing to remember that the man who does 
not enjoy this advantage can nevertheless stand beside the 
man who does, and can do his duty with the like efficiency, 
if he chooses to. Of course he must not let his desire take the 
form merely of a day-dream. Let him dream about being 
a fearless man, and the more he dreams the better he will be, 
always provided he does his best to realize the dream in 
practice. He can do his part honorably and well provided 
only he sets fearlessness before himself as an ideal, schools 
himself to think of danger merely as something to be faced 
and overcome, and regards life itself as he should regard it, 
not as something to be thrown away, but as a pawn to be 
promptly hazarded whenever the hazard is warranted by 
the larger interests of the great game in which we are all 
engaged. 



CHAPTER III 

PRACTICAL POLITICS 

WHEN I left Harvard, I took up the study of law. 
If I had been sufficiently fortunate to come under 
Professor Thayer, of the Harvard Law School, 
it may well be that I would have realized that the 
lawyer can do a great work for justice and against legalism. 
But, doubtless chiefly through my own fault, some of 
the teaching of the law books and of the classroom seemed 
to me to be against justice. The caveat emptor side of the 
law, like the caveat emptor side of business, seemed to me 
repellent ; it did not make for social fair dealing. The 
"let the buyer beware" maxim, when translated into actual 
practice, whether in law or business, tends to translate itself 
further into the seller making his profit at the expense of the 
buyer, instead of by a bargain which shall be to the profit 
of both. It did not seem to me that the law was framed to 
discourage as it should sharp practice, and all other kinds 
of bargains except those which are fair and of benefit to 
both sides. I was young; there was much in the judgment 
which I then formed on this matter which I should now 
revise ; but, then as now, many of the big corporation 
lawyers, to whom the ordinary members of the bar then as 
now looked up, held certain standards which were difficult 
to recognize as compatible with the idealism I suppose 
every high-minded young man is apt to feel. If I had been 
obliged to earn every cent I spent, I should have gone whole- 
heartedly into the business of making both ends meet, 
and should have taken up the law or any other respectable 
occupation — for I then held, and now hold, the belief that 
a man's first duty is to pull his own weight and to take care 

6i 



62 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

of those dependent upon him ; and I then believed, and now 
believe, that the greatest privilege and greatest duty for 
any man Is to be happily married, and that no other form 
of success or service, for either man or woman, can be wisely 
accepted as a substitute or alternative. But It happened that 
I had been left enough money by my father not to make It 
necessary for me to think solely of earning bread for myself 
and my family. I had enough to get bread. What I 
had to do, if I wanted butter and jam, was to provide the 
butter and jam, but to count their cost as compared with 
other things. In other words, I made up my mind that, while 
I must earn money, I could afford to make earning money 
the secondary Instead of the primary object of my career. 
If I had had no money at all, then my first duty would have 
been to earn It In any honest fashion. As I had some money 
I felt that my need for more money was to be treated as a 
secondary need, and that while it was my business to make 
more money where I legitimately and properly could, yet 
that It was also my business to treat other kinds of work as 
more important than money-making. 

Almost immediately after leaving Harvard in 1880 I began 
to take an Interest In politics. I did not then believe, and 
I do not now believe, that any man should ever attempt to 
make politics his only career. It Is a dreadful misfortune 
for a man to grow to feel that his whole livelihood and 
whole happiness depend upon his staying In office. Such a 
feeling prevents him from being of real service to the people 
while in office, and always puts him under the heaviest 
strain of pressure to barter his convictions for the sake of 
holding office. A man should have some other occupation 
— I had several other occupations — to which he can resort 
If at any time he Is thrown out of office, or If at any time he 
finds it necessary to choose a course which will probably 
result In his being thrown out, unless he Is willing to stay In 
at cost to his conscience. 

At that day, In 1880, a young man of my bringing up and 
convictions could join only the Republican party, and 
join it I accordingly did. It was no simple thing to join 
it then. That was long before the era of ballot reform and 



PRACTICAL POLITICS 63 

the control of primaries ; long before the era when we realized 
that the Government must take official notice of the deeds 
and acts of party organizations. The party was still treated 
as a private corporation, and in each district the organization 
formed a kind of social and political club. A man had to be 
regularly proposed for and elected into this club, just as 
into any other club. As a friend of mine picturesquely 
phrased it, I "had to break into the organization with a 
jimmy." 

Under these circumstances there was some difficulty in 
joining the local organization, and considerable amusement 
and excitement to be obtained out of it after I had joined. 

It was over thirty-three years ago that I thus became a 
member of the Twenty-first District Republican Association 
in the city of New York. The men I knew best were the 
men in the clubs of social pretension and the men of culti- 
vated taste and easy life. When I began to make inquiries 
as to the whereabouts of the local Republican Association 
and the means of joining it, these men — and the big 
business men and lawyers also — laughed at me, and told 
me that politics were "low"; that the organizations were 
not controlled by "gentlemen"; that I would find them run 
by saloon-keepers, horse-car conductors, and the like, and not 
by men with any of whom I would come in contact outside; 
and, moreover, they assured me that the men I met would be 
rough and brutal and unpleasant to deal with. I answered 
that if this were so it merely meant that the people I knew 
did not belong to the governing class, and that the other 
people did — and that I intended to be one of the governing 
class; that if they proved too hard-bit for me I supposed I 
would have to quit, but that I certainly would not quit 
until I had made the effort and found out whether I really 
was too weak to hold my own in the rough and tumble. 

The Republican Association of which I became a member 
held its meetings in Morton Hall, a large, barn-like room 
over a saloon. Its furniture was of the canonical kind : 
dingy benches, spittoons, a dais at one end with a table and 
chair and a stout pitcher for iced water, and on the walls 
pictures of General Grant, and of Levi P. Morton, to whose 



64 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

generosity we owed the room. We had regular meetings 
once or twice a month, and between times the place was 
treated, at least on certain nights, as a kind of club-room. 
I went around there often enough to have the men get 
accustomed to me and to have me get accustomed 
to them, so that we began to speak the same language, 
and so that each could begin to live down in the 
other's mind what Bret Harte has called "the defective 
moral quality of being a stranger." It is not often that a 
man can make opportunities for himself. But he can put 
himself in such shape that when or if the opportunities come 
he is ready to take advantage of them. This was what 
happened to me in connection with my experiences in Morton 
Hall. I soon became on good terms with a number of the 
ordinary "heelers" and even some of the minor leaders. 
The big leader was Jake Hess, who treated me with 
rather distant affability. There were prominent lawyers 
and business men who belonged, but they took little part 
in the actual meetings. What they did was done elsewhere. 
The running of the machine was left to Jake Hess and his 
captains of tens and of hundreds. 

Among these lesser captains I soon struck up a friendship 
with Joe Murray, a friendship which is as strong now as it 
was thirty-three years ago. He had been born in Ireland, 
but brought to New York by his parents when he was three 
or four years old, and, as he expressed it, "raised as a bare- 
footed boy on First Avenue." When not eighteen he had 
enlisted in the Army of the Potomac and taken part in the 
campaign that closed the Civil War. Then he came back 
to First Avenue, and, being a fearless, powerful, energetic 
young fellow, careless and reckless, speedily grew to some 
prominence as leader of a gang. In that district, and at that 
time, politics was a rough business, and Tammany Hall 
held unquestioned sway. The district was overwhelmingly 
Democratic, and Joe and his friends were Democrats who on 
election day performed the usual gang work for the local 
Democratic leader, whose business it was to favor and 
reward them in return. This same local leader, like many 
other greater leaders, became puffed up by prosperity, and 



PRACTICAL POLITICS 65 

forgot the instruments through which he had achieved 
prosperity. After one election he showed a callous indif- 
ference to the hard work of the gang and complete disregard 
of his before-election promises. He counted upon the re- 
sentment wearing itself out, as usual, in threats and bluster. 

But Joe Murray was not a man who forgot. He explained 
to his gang his purposes and the necessity of being quiet. 
Accordingly they waited for their revenge until the next 
election day. They then, as Joe expressed it, decided "to 
vote furdest away from the leader" — I am using the lan- 
guage of Joe's youth — and the best way to do this was to 
vote the Republican ticket. In those days each party had 
a booth near the polling-place in each election district, where 
the party representative dispensed the party ballots. This 
had been a district in which, as a rule, very early in the day 
the Republican election leader had his hat knocked over his 
eyes and his booth kicked over and his ballots scattered ; 
and then the size of the Democratic majority depended on an 
elastic appreciation of exactly how much was demanded from 
headquarters. Buton this day things went differently. The 
gang, with a Roman sense of duty, took an active interest 
in seeing that the Republican was given his full rights. More- 
over, they made the most energetic reprisals on their op- 
ponents, and as they were distinctly the tough and fighting 
element, justice came to her own with a whoop. Would-be 
repeaters were thrown out on their heads. Every person 
who could be cajoled or, I fear, intimidated, was given the 
Republican ticket, and the upshot was that at the end of 
the day a district which had never hitherto polled more 
than two or three per cent of its vote Republican broke 
about even between the two parties. 

To Joe it had been merely an act of retribution in so far 
as it was not simply a spree. But the leaders at the 
Republican headquarters did not know this, and when 
they got over their paralyzed astonishment at the returns, 
they investigated to find out what it meant. Somebody 
told them that it represented the work of a young man 
named Joseph Murray. Accordingly they sent for him. 
The room in which they received him was doubtless some 

F 



66 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 




place 
Hall, 
who 
were 



like Morton 
and the men 
received him 
akin to those 



who had leadership 
in Morton Hall ; but 
in Joe's eyes they 
stood for a higher 
civilization, for op- 
portunity, for gener- 
ous recognition of 
successful effort — 
in short, for all the 
things that an eager 
young man desires. 
He was received and 
patted on the back 
by a man who was a 
great man to the 
world in which he 
lived. He was intro- 
duced to the audi- 
ence as a young man 
whose achievement 
was such as to prom- 
ise much for the 
future, and more- 
over he was given a 
place in the post- 
ofhce — as I have 
said, this was longbe- 
fore the day of Civil 
Service Reform. 

Now, to the wrong 
kind of man all this 
might have meant 
nothing at all. But 
in Joe Murray's case it meant everything. He was by 
nature as straight a man, as fearless and as stanchly 



Joseph Murray. 

"By nature a straight man, as fearless and as stanchly 
loyal as any one whom I have ever met — a man to be 
trusted in any position demanding courage, integrity, 
and good faith." 



PRACTICAL POLITICS 67 

loyal, as any one whom I have ever met, a man to be 
trusted in any position demanding courage, integrity, and 
good faith. He did his duty in the public service, and 
became devotedly attached to the organization which he felt 
had given him his chance in life. When I knew him he was 
already making his way up ; one of the proofs and evidences 
of which was that he owned a first-class racing trotter — 
"Alice Lane" — behind which he gave me more than one 
spin. During this first winter I grew to like Joe and his par- 
ticular cronies. But I had no idea that they especially 
returned the liking, and in the first row we had in the organi- 
zation (which arose over a movement, that I backed, to stand 
by a non-partisan method of street-cleaning) Joe and all his 
friends stood stiffly with the machine, and my side, the 
reform side, was left with only some half-dozen votes out 
of three or four hundred. I had expected no other out- 
come and took it good-humoredly, but without changing my 
attitude. 

Next fall, as the elections drew near, Joe thought he would 
like to make a drive at Jake Hess, and after considerable 
planning decided that his best chance lay in the fight for 
the nomination to the Assembly, the lower house of the 
Legislature. He picked me as the candidate with whom he 
would be most likely to win ; and win he did. It was not 
my fight, it was Joe's ; and it was to him that I owe my entry 
into politics. I had at that time neither the reputation 
nor the ability to have won the nomination for myself, 
and indeed never would have thought of trying for it. 

Jake Hess was entirely good-humored about it. In spite 
of my being anti-machine, my relations with him had been 
friendly and human, and when he was beaten he turned in 
to help Joe elect me. At first they thought they would take 
me on a personal canvass through the saloons along Sixth 
Avenue. The canvass, however, did not last beyond the 
first saloon. I was introduced with proper solemnity to 
the saloon-keeper — a very important personage, for this 
was before the days when saloon-keepers became merely 
the mortgaged chattels of the brewers — and he began to 
cross-examine me, a little too much in the tone of one who 



68 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

was dealing with a suppliant for his favor. He said he 
expected that I would of course treat the liquor business 
fairly ; to which I answered, none too cordially, that I 
hoped I should treat all interests fairly. He then said that 
he regarded the licenses as too high ; to which I responded 
that I believed they were really not high enough, and that 
I should try to have them made higher. The conversation 
threatened to become stormy. Messrs. Murray and Hess, 
on some hastily improvised plea, took me out into the street, 
and then Joe explained to me that it was not worth my 
while staying in Sixth Avenue any longer, that I had better 
go right back to Fifth Avenue and attend to my friends there, 
and that he would look after my interests on Sixth Avenue. 
I was triumphantly elected. 

Once before Joe had interfered in similar fashion and 
secured the nomination of an Assemblyman ; and shortly 
after election he had grown to feel toward this Assemblyman 
that he must have fed on the meat which rendered Csesar 
proud, as he became inaccessible to the ordinary mortals 
whose place of resort was Morton Hall. He eyed me warily 
for a short time to see if I was likely in this respect to follow 
in my predecessor's footsteps. Finding that I did not, 
he and all my other friends and supporters assumed toward 
me the very pleasantest attitude that it was possible to 
assume. They did not ask me for a thing. They accepted 
as a matter of course the view that I was absolutely straight 
and was trying to do the best I could in the Legislature. 
They desired nothing except that I should make a success, 
and they supported me with hearty enthusiasm, I am a 
little at a loss to know quite how to express the quality in 
my relationship with Joe Murray and my other friends of 
this period which rendered that relationship so beneficial to 
me. When I went into politics at this time I was not con- 
scious of going in with the set purpose to benefit other people, 
but of getting for myself a privilege to which I was entitled 
in common with other people. So it was in my relationship 
with these men. If there had lurked in the innermost 
recesses of my mind anywhere the thought that I was in 
some way a patron or a benefactor, or was doing something 



PRACTICAL POLITICS 69 

noble by taking part in politics, or that I expected the smallest 
consideration save what I could earn on my own merits, I 
am certain that somehow or other the existence of that feel- 
ing would have been known and resented. As a matter of 
fact, there was not the slightest temptation on my part to 
have any such feeling or any one of such feelings. I no 
more expected special consideration in politics than I would 
have expected it in the boxing ring. I wished to act squarely 
to others, and I wished to be able to show that I could hold 
my own as against others. The attitude of my new friends 
toward me was first one of polite reserve, and then that 
of friendly alliance. Afterwards I became admitted to 
comradeship, and then to leadership. I need hardly say 
how earnestly I believe that men should have a keen 
and lively sense of their obligations in politics, of their 
duty to help forward great causes, and to struggle for the 
betterment of conditions that are unjust to their fellows, the 
men and women who are less fortunate in life. But in addi- 
tion to this feeling there must be a feeling of real fellowship 
with the other men and women engaged in the same task, 
fellowship of work, with fun to vary the work ; for unless there 
is this feelingof fellowship, of common effort on an equal plane 
for a common end, it will be difficult to keep the relations 
wholesome and natural. To be patronized is as offensive 
as to be insulted. No one of us cares permanently to have 
some one else conscientiously striving to do him good ; 
what we want is to work with that some one else for the good 
of both of us — any man will speedily find that other people 
can benefit him just as much as he can benefit them. 

Neither Joe Murray nor I nor any of our associates at 
that time were alive to social and industrial needs which 
we now all of us recognize. But we then had very clearly 
before our minds the need of practically applying certain 
elemental virtues, the virtues of honesty and efficiency in 
politics, the virtue of efficiency side by side with honesty 
in private and public life alike, the virtues of consideration 
and fair dealing in business as between man and man, 
and especially as between the man who is an employer and 
the man who is an employee. On all fundamental questions 



70 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

Joe Murray and I thought alike. We never parted company 
excepting on the question of Civil Service Reform, where he 
sincerely felt that I showed doctrinaire affinities, that I 
sided with the pharisees. We got back again into close 
relations as soon as I became Police Commissioner under 
Mayor Strong, for Joe was then made Excise Commissioner, 
and was, I believe, the best Excise Commissioner the 
city of New York ever had. He is now a farmer, his 
boys have been through Columbia College, and he and I 
look at the questions, political, social, and industrial, which 
confront us in 1913 from practically the same standpoint, 
just as we once looked at the questions that confronted us 
in 1881. 

There are many debts that I owe Joe Murray, and some 
for which he was only unconsciously responsible, I do not 
think that a man is fit to do good work in our American 
democracy unless he is able to have a genuine fellow-feeling 
for, understanding of, and sympathy with his fellow-Ameri- 
cans, whatever their creed or their birthplace, the section 
in which they live, or the work which they do, provided they 
possess the only kind of Americanism that really counts, 
the Americanism of the spirit. It was no small help to me, 
in the effort to make myself a good citizen and good American, 
that the political associate with whom I was on closest and 
most intimate terms during my early years was a man 
born in Ireland, by creed a Catholic, with Joe Murray's 
upbringing; just as it helped me greatly at a later period 
to work for certain vitally necessary public needs with Arthur 
von Briesen, in whom the spirit of the "Acht-und-Vierziger" 
idealists was embodied ; just as my whole life was influenced 
by my long association with Jacob Riis, whom I am tempted 
to call the best American I ever knew, although he was 
already a young man when he came hither from Denmark. 

I was elected to the Legislature in the fall of 1881, and found 
myself the youngest man in that body. I was reelected the 
two following years. Like all young men and inexperienced 
members, I had considerable difficulty in teaching myself 
to speak. I profited much by the advice of a hard-headed 
old countryman — who was unconsciously paraphrasing 



PRACTICAL POLITICS 71 

the Duke of Wellington, who was himself doubtless para- 
phrasing somebody else. The advice ran: "Don't speak 
until you are sure you have something to say, and know 
just what it is ; then say it, and sit down." 

My first days in the Legislature were much like those of a 
boy in a strange school. My fellow-legislators and I eyed 
one another with mutual distrust. Each of us chose 
his seat, each began by following the lead of some veteran 
in the first routine matters, and then, in a week or two, we 
began to drift into groups according to our several affinities. 
The Legislature was Democratic. I was a Republican from 
the "silk stocking" district, the wealthiest district in New 
York, and I was put, as one of the minority members, on 
the Committee of Cities. It was a coveted position. I 
did not make any effort to get on, and, as far as I know, was 
put there merely because it was felt to be in accordance with 
the fitness of things. 

A very short experience showed me that, as the Legislature 
was then constituted, the so-called party contests had no 
interest whatever for me. There was no real party division 
on most of the things that were of concern in State politics, 
both Republicans and Democrats being for and against 
them. My friendships were made, not with regard to 
party lines, but because I found, and my friends found, that 
we had the same convictions on questions of principle and 
questions of policy. The only difference was that there 
was a larger proportion of these men among the Republicans 
than among the Democrats, and that it was easier for me at 
the outset to scrape acquaintance, among the men who felt 
as I did, with the Republicans. They were for the most 
part from the country districts. 

My closest friend for the three years I was there was 
Billy O'Neill, from the Adirondacks. He kept a small 
crossroads store. He was a young man, although a few 
years older than I was, and, like myself, had won his posi- 
tion without regard to the machine. He had thought he 
would like to be Assemblyman, so he had taken his buggy 
and had driven around Franklin County visiting everybody, 
had upset the local ring, and came to the Legislature as 



72 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

his own master. There Is surely something in American 
traditions that does tend toward real democracy in spite of 
our faults and shortcomings. In most other countries two 
men of as different antecedents, ancestry, and surroundings 
as Billy O'Neill and I would have had far more difficulty 
in coming together. I came from the biggest city in America 





jr 


^^^F 




MP 1 





Michael J. Costello. 



and from the wealthiest ward of that city, and he from a 
backwoods county where he kept a store at a crossroads. 
In all the unimportant things we seemed far apart. But In 
all the Important things we were close together. We looked 
at all questions from substantially the same view-point, 
and we stood shoulder to shoulder in every legislative fight 
during those three years. He abhorred demagogy just as 



PRACTICAL POLITICS 73 

he abhorred corruption. He had thought much on political 
problems ; he admired Alexander Hamilton as much as I 
did, being a strong believer in a powerful National govern- 
ment ; and we both of us diiTered from Alexander Hamilton 
in being stout adherents of Abraham Lincoln's views where- 
ever the rights of the people were concerned. Any man who 
has met with success, if he will be frank with himself, must 
admit that there has been a big element of fortune in the 
success. Fortune favored me, whereas her hand was heavy 
against Billy O'Neill. All his life he had to strive hard to 
wring his bread from harsh surroundings and a reluctant 
fate ; if fate had been but a little kinder, I believe he would 
have had a great political career; and he would have done 
good service for the country in any position in which he 
might have been put. 

There were other Republicans, like Isaac Hunt and Jonas 
van Duzer and Walter Howe and Henry Sprague, who were 
among my close friends and allies ; and a gigantic one-eyed 
veteran of the Civil War, a gallant General, Curtis from St. 
Lawrence County ; and a capital fellow, whom afterwards, 
when Governor, I put on the bench, Kruse, from Cattaraugus 
County. Kruse was a German by birth ; as far as I know, 
the only German from Cattaraugus County at that time; 
and, besides being a German, he was also a Prohibitionist. 
Among the Democrats were Hamden Robb and Thomas 
Newbold, and Tom Welch of Niagara, who did a great 
service in getting the State to set aside Niagara Falls Park — 
after a discouraging experience with the first Governor 
before whom we brought the bill, who listened with austere 
patience to our arguments in favor of the State establishing 
a park, and then conclusively answered us by the question, 
"But, gentlemen, why should we spend the people's money 
when just as much water will run over the Falls without a 
park as with it?" Then there were a couple of members 
from New York and Brooklyn, Mike Costello and Pete 
Kelly. 

Mike Costello had been elected as a Tammany man. He 
was as fearless as he was honest. He came from Ireland, 
and had accepted the Tammany Fourth of July orations 



74 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

as indicating the real attitude of that organization towards 
the rights of the people. A month or two in Albany con- 
verted him to a profound distrust of applied Tammany 
methods. He and I worked hand in hand with equal indif- 
ference to our local machines. His machine leaders 
warned him fairly that they would throw him out at the 
next election, which they did ; but he possessed a seasoned- 
hickory toughness of ability to contend with adverse cir- 
cumstances, and kept his head well above water. A better 
citizen does not exist ; and our friendship has never faltered. 
Peter Kelly's fate was a tragedy. He was a bright, 
well-educated young fellow, an ardent believer in Henry 
George. At the beginning he and I failed to understand 
each other or to get on together, for our theories of govern- 
ment were radically opposed. After a couple of months spent 
in active contests with men whose theories had nothing 
whatever to do with their practices, Kelly and I found in 
our turn that it really did not make much difference what 
our abstract theories were on questions that were not before 
the Legislature, in view of the fact that on the actual mat- 
ters before the Legislature, the most important of 
which involved questions of elementary morality, we were 
heartily at one. We began to vote together and act to- 
gether, and by the end of the session found that in all 
practical matters that were up for action we thought to- 
gether. Indeed, each of us was beginning to change his 
theories, so that even in theory we were coming closer 
together. He was ardent and generous ; he was a young 
lawyer, with a wife and children, whose ambition had 
tempted him into politics, and who had been befriended 
by the local bosses under the belief that they could count 
upon him for anything they really wished. Unfortunately, 
what they really wished was often corrupt. Kelly defied 
them, fought the battles of the people with ardor and 
good faith, and when the bosses refused him a renomina- 
tion, he appealed from them to the people. When we both 
came up for reelection, I won easily in my district, where 
circumstances conspired to favor me ; and Kelly, with 
exactly the same record that I had, except that it was more 



PRACTICAL POLITICS 75 

creditable because he took his stand against greater odds, 
was beaten in his district. Defeat to me would have meant 
merely chagrin ; to Kelly it meant terrible material disaster. 
He had no money. Like every rigidly honest man, he had 
found that going into politics was expensive and that his 
salary as Assemblyman did not cover the financial outgo. 
He had lost his practice and he had incurred the ill will 
of the powerful, so that it was impossible at the moment to 
pick up his practice again ; and the worry and disappointment 
affected him so much that shortly after election he was 
struck down by sickness. Just before Christmas some of 
us were informed that Kelly was in such financial straits 
that he and his family would be put out into the street 
before New Year. This was prevented by the action of 
some of his friends who had served with him in the Legisla- 
ture, and he recovered, at least to a degree, and took up 
the practice of his profession. But he was a broken man. 
In the Legislature in which he served one of his fellow-Demo- 
crats from Brooklyn was the Speaker — Alfred C. Chapin, 
the leader and the foremost representative of the reform 
Democracy, whom Kelly zealously supported. A few years 
later Chapin, a very able man, was elected Mayor of Brook- 
lyn on a reform Democratic ticket. Shortly after his elec- 
tion I was asked to speak at a meeting in a Brooklyn club at 
which various prominent citizens, including the Mayor, were 
present. I spoke on civic decency, and toward the close of 
my speech I sketched Kelly's career for my audience, told 
them how he had stood up for the rights of the people of 
Brooklyn, and how the people had failed to stand up for him, 
and the way he had been punished, precisely because he 
had been a good citizen who acted as a good citizen 
should act. I ended by saying that the reform Democracy 
had now come into power, that Mr. Chapin was Mayor, 
and that I very earnestly hoped recognition would at last 
be given to Kelly for the fight he had waged at such 
bitter cost to himself. My words created some impres- 
sion, and Mayor Chapin at once said that he would take 
care of Kelly and see that justice was done him. I went 
home that evening much pleased. In the morning, at break- 



v. 



76 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

fast, I received a brief note from Chapin in these words : 
"It was nine last evening when you finished speaking of 
what Kelly had done, and when I said that I would take 
care of him. At ten last night Kelly died." He had been 
dying while I was making my speech, and he never knew 
that at last there was to be a tardy recognition of what he had 
done, a tardy justification for the sacrifices he had made. 
The man had fought, at heavy cost to himself and with entire 
disinterestedness, for popular rights ; but no recognition for 
what he had done had come to him from the people, whose 
interest he had so manfully upheld. 

Where there is no chance of statistical or mathematical 
measurement, it is very hard to tell just the degree to which 
conditions change from one period to another. This is 
peculiarly hard to do when we deal with such a matter as 
corruption. Personally I am inclined to think that in 
public life we are on the whole a little better and not a little 
worse than we were thirty years ago, when I was serving 
in the New York Legislature. I think the conditions are a 
little better in National, in State, and in municipal politics. 
Doubtless there are points in which they are worse, and there 
is an enormous amount that needs reformation. But it 
does seem to me as if, on the whole, things had slightly 
improved. 

When I went into politics. New York City was under the 
control of Tammany, which was from time to time opposed 
by some other — and evanescent — city Democratic organi- 
zation. The up-country Democrats had not yet fallen under 
Tammany sway, and were on the point of developing a big 
country political boss in the shape of David B. Hill. The 
Republican party was split into the Stalwart and Half- 
Breed factions. Accordingly neither party had one domi- 
nant boss, or one dominant machine, each being controlled 
by jarring and warring bosses and machines. The cor- 
ruption was not what it had been in the days of Tweed, 
when outside individuals controlled the legislators like 
puppets. Nor was there any such centralization of the boss 
system as occurred later. Many of the members were under 
the control of local bosses or local machines. But the 



PRACTICAL POLITICS -j-j 

corrupt work was usually done through the members 
directly. 

Of course I never had anything in the nature of legal proof 
of corruption, and the figures I am about to give are merely 
approximate. But three years' experience convinced me, 
in the first place, that there were a great many thoroughly 
corrupt men in the Legislature, perhaps a third of the whole 
number; and, in the next place, that the honest men out- 
numbered the corrupt men, and that, if it were ever possible to 
get an issue of right and wrong put vividly and unmistakably 
before them in a way that would arrest their attention 
and that would arrest the attention of their constituents, we 
could count on the triumph of the right. The trouble was 
that in most cases the issue was confused. To read some 
kinds of literature one would come to the conclusion that 
the only corruption in legislative circles was in the form of 
bribery by corporations, and that the line was sharp between 
the honest man who was always voting against corporations 
and the dishonest man who was always bribed to vote for 
them. My experience was the direct contrary of this. 
For every one bill introduced (not passed) corruptly to favor 
a corporation, there were at least ten introduced (not passed, 
and in this case not intended to be passed) to blackmail 
corporations. The majority of the corrupt members would 
be found voting for the blackmailing bills if they were not 
paid, and would also be found voting in the interests of 
the corporation if they were paid. The blackmailing, or, 
as they were always called, the "strike" bills, could them- 
selves be roughly divided into two categories : bills which it 
would have been proper to pass, and those that it would not 
hav^e been proper to pass. Some of the bills aimed at cor- 
porations were utterly wild and improper; and of these a 
proportion might be introduced by honest and foolish zealots, 
whereas most of them were introduced by men who had not 
the slightest intention of passing them, but who wished to 
be paid not to pass them. The most profitable type of 
bill to the accomplished blackmailer, however, was a bill 
aimed at a real corporate abuse which the corporation, 
either from wickedness or folly, was unwilling to remedy. 



78 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

Of the measures introduced in the interest of corporations 
there were also some that were proper and some that were 
improper. The corrupt legislators, the "black horse 
cavalry," as they were termed, would demand payment 
to vote as the corporations wished, no matter whether the 
bill was proper or improper. Sometimes, if the bill was a 
proper one, the corporation would have the virtue or the 
strength of mind to refuse to pay for its passage, and 
sometimes it would not. 

A very slight consideration of the above state of affairs 
will show how difficult it was at times to keep the issue clear, 
for honest and dishonest men were continually found side 
by side voting now against and now for a corporation measure, 
the one set from proper and the other set from grossly 
improper motives. Of course part of the fault lay in the 
attitude of outsiders. It was very early borne in upon me 
that almost equal harm was done by indiscriminate defense 
of, and indiscriminate attack on, corporations. It was hard 
to say whether the man who prided himself upon always 
antagonizing the corporations, or the man who, on the plea 
that he was a good conservative, always stood up for them, 
was the more mischievous agent of corruption and demorali- 
zation. 

In one fight in the House over a bill as to which there was 
a bitter contest between two New York City street railway 
organizations, I saw lobbyists come down on the floor 
itself and draw venal men out into the lobbies with almost 
no pretense of concealing what they were doing. In another 
case in which the elevated railway corporations of New York 
City, against the protest of the Mayor and the other local 
authorities, rushed through a bill remitting over half their 
taxes, some of the members who voted for the measure 
probably thought it was right ; but every corrupt man in 
the House voted with them ; and the man must indeed have 
been stupid who thought that these votes were given dis- 
interestedly. 

The effective fight against this bill for the revision of the 
elevated railway taxes — perhaps the most openly crooked 
measure which during my time was pushed at Albany — was 




VViiliam O'Neill. 
Isaac Hunt. 



Mr. Spinney of the New York Times. 



Theodore Roosevelt. 
Walter Howe. 



Theodore Roosevelt and .\ Group of his Friends, when he was a Member of the 
New York Legislature. 



8o THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY ^ 

waged by Mike Costello and myself. We used to spend a 
good deal of time in industrious research into the various 
bills introduced, so as to find out what their authors really 
had in mind ; this research, by the way, being highly un- 
appreciated and much resented by the authors. In the 
course of his researches Mike had been puzzled by an 
unimportant bill, seemingly related to a Constitutional 
amendment, introduced by a local saloon-keeper, whose 
interests, as far as we knew, were wholly remote from the 
Constitution, or from any form of abstract legal betterment, j 
However, the measure seemed harmless ; we did not inter- 
fere ; and it passed the House. Mike, however, followed 
its career in the Senate, and at the last moment, almost by '■ 
accident, discovered that it had been "amended" by the 
simple process of striking out everything after the enacting 
clause and unobtrusively substituting the proposal to remit 
the elevated railway taxes ! The authors of the change 
wished to avoid unseemly publicity; their hope was to ' 
slip the measure through the Legislature and have it in- 
stantly signed by the Governor, before any public attention \ 
was excited. In the Senate their plan worked to perfection. 
There was in the Senate no fighting leadership of the forces 
of decency ; and for such leadership of the non-fighting type 
the representatives of corruption cared absolutely nothing. 
By bold and adroit management the substitution in the 
Senate was effected without opposition or comment. The 
bill (in reality, of course, an absolutely new and undebated 
bill) then came back to the House nominally as a merely 
amended measure, which, under the rules, was not open to 
debate unless the amendment was first by vote rejected. 
This was the great bill of the session for the lobby ; and the i 
lobby was keenly alive to the need of quick, wise action. 
No public attention whatever had so far been excited, i 
Every measure was taken to secure immediate and silent 
action. A powerful leader, whom the beneficiaries of the bill 
trusted, a fearless and unscrupulous man, of much force 
and great knowledge of parliamentary law, was put in the 
chair. Costello and I were watched ; and when for a moment 
we were out of the House, the bill was brought over from the i 



PRACTICAL POLITICS 8i 

Senate, and the clerk began to read it, all the black horse 
cavalry, in expectant mood, being in their seats. But 
Mike Costello, who was in the clerk's room, happened to 
catch a few words of what was being read. In he rushed, 
despatched a messenger for me, and began a single-handed 
filibuster. The Speaker pro tem called him to order. 
Mike continued to speak and protest ; the Speaker hammered 
him down ; Mike continued his protests ; the sergeant-at- 
arms was sent to arrest and remove him ; and then I bounced 
in, and continued the protest, and refused to sit down or be 
silent. Amid wild confusion the amendment was declared 
adopted, and the bill was ordered engrossed and sent to the 
Governor. But we had carried our point. The next morn- 
ing the whole press rang with what had happened ; every 
detail of the bill, and every detail of the way it had been 
slipped through the Legislature, were made public. All 
the slow and cautious men in the House, who had been afraid 
of taking sides, now came forward in support of us. Another 
debate was held on the proposal to rescind the vote ; the city 
authorities waked up to protest; the Governor refused to 
sign the bill. Two or three years later, after much litigation, 
the taxes were paid ; in the newspapers it was stated that the 
amount was over $i ,500,000. It was Mike Costello to whom 
primarily was due the fact that this sum was saved the public, 
and that the forces of corruption received a stinging rebuff. 
He did not expect recognition or reward for his services ; 
and he got none. The public, if it knew of what he had done, 
promptly forgot it. The machine did not forget it, and 
turned him down at the next election. 

One of the stand-by "strikes" was a bill for reducing the 
elevated railway fare, which at that time was ten cents, to 
five cents. In one Legislature the men responsible for the 
introduction of the bill suffered such an extraordinary change 
of heart that when the bill came up — being pushed by 
zealous radicals who really were honest — the introducers 
actually voted against it ! A number of us who had been 
very doubtful about the principle of the bill voted for it 
simply because we were convinced that money was being 
used to stop it, and we hated to seem to side with the cor- 



82 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

ruptionists. Then there came a wave of popular feeling 
in its favor, the bill was reintroduced at the next session, 
the railways very wisely decided that they would simply 
fight it on its merits, and the entire black horse cavalry 
contingent, together with all the former friends of the meas- 
ure, voted against it. Some of us, who in our anger at the 
methods formerly resorted to for killing the bill had voted for 
it the previous year, with much heart-searching again 
voted for it, as I now think unwisely ; and the bill was 
vetoed by the then Governor, Grover Cleveland. I believe 
the veto was proper, and those who felt as I did supported 
the veto ; for although it was entirely right that the fare 
should be reduced to five cents, which was soon afterwards 
done, the method was unwise, and would have set a mischie- 
vous precedent. 

An instance of an opposite kind occurred in connection 
with a great railway corporation which wished to increase 
its terminal facilities in one of our great cities. The repre- 
sentatives of the railway brought the bill to me and asked me 
to look into it, saying that they were well aware that it 
was the kind of bill that lent itself to blackmail, and that 
they wished to get it through on its merits, and invited the 
most careful examination. I looked carefully into it, found 
that the municipal authorities and the property-owners 
whose property was to be taken favored it, and also found 
that it was an absolute necessity from the standpoint of 
the city no less than from the standpoint of the railway. 
So I said I would take charge of it if I had guarantees that 
no money should be used and nothing improper done in 
order to push it. This was agreed to. I was then acting 
as chairman of the committee before which the bill went. 

A very brief experience proved what I had already been 
practically sure of, that there was a secret combination of 
the majority of the committee on a crooked basis. On one 
pretext or another the crooked members of the committee 
held the bill up, refusing to report it either favorably or un- 
favorably. There were one or two members of the com- 
mittee who were pretty rough characters, and when I de- 
cided to force matters I was not sure that we would not have 



PRACTICAL POLITICS 83 

trouble. There was a broken chair in the room, and I got 
a leg of it loose and put it down beside me where it was not 
visible, but where I might get at it in a hurry if necessary. 
I moved that the bill be reported favorably. This was voted 
down without debate by the " combine," some of whom kept 
a wooden stolidity of look, while others leered at me with 
sneering insolence. I then moved that it be reported un- 
favorably, and again the motion was voted down by the same 
majority and in the same fashion. I then put the bill' in 
my pocket and announced that I would report it anyhow. 
This almost precipitated a riot, especially when I explained, 
in answer to statements that my conduct would be exposed 
on the floor of the Legislature, that in that case I should 
give the Legislature the reasons why I suspected that the 
men holding up all report of the bill were holding it up for 
purposes of blackmail. The riot did not come off; partly, 
I think, because the opportune production of the chair-leg 
had a sedative effect, and partly owing to wise counsels 
from one or two of my opponents. 

Accordingly I got the bill reported to the Legislature and 
put on the calendar. But here it came to a dead halt. I 
think this was chiefly because most of the newspapers which 
noticed the matter at all treated it in such a cynical spirit 
as to encourage the men who wished to blackmail. These 
papers reported the introduction of the bill, and said that 
"all the hungry legislators were clamoring for their share of 
the pie"; and they accepted as certain the fact that there 
was going to be a division of "pie." This succeeded in 
frightening honest men, and also in relieving the rogues; 
the former were afraid they would be suspected of receiving 
money if they voted for the bill, and the latter were given a 
shield behind which to stand until they were paid. I was 
wholly unable to move the bill forward in the Legislature, 
and finally a representative of the railway told me that he 
thought he would like to take the bill out of my hands, 
that I did not seem able to get it through, and that perhaps 
some "older and more experienced" leader could be more 
successful. I was pretty certain what this meant, but of 
course I had no kind of proof, and moreover I was not in a 



84 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

position to say that I could promise success. Accordingly, 
the bill was given into the charge of a veteran, whom I 
beUeve to have been a personally honest man, but who 
was not inquisitive about the motives influencing his col- 
leagues. This gentleman, who went by a nickname which 
I shall incorrectly call "the bald eagle of Weehawken," was 
efficient and knew his job. After a couple of weeks a motion 
to put the bill through was made by "the bald eagle"; 
the "black horse cavalry," whose feelings had undergone a 
complete change in the intervening time, voted unani- 
mously for it, in company with all the decent members ; 
and that was the end. Now here was a bit of work in the 
interest of a corporation and In the interest of a community, 
which the corporation at first tried honestly to have put 
through on Its merits. The blame for the failure lay pri- 
marily in the supine indifference of the community to 
legislative wrong-doing, so long as only the corporations 
were blackmailed. 

Except as above mentioned, I was not brought in contact 
with big business, save in the effort to impeach a certain 
judge. This judge had been used as an instrument in their 
business by certain of the men connected with the elevated 
railways and other great corporations at that time. We got 
hold of his correspondence with one of these men, and it 
showed a shocking willingness to use the judicial office in 
any way that one of the kings of finance of that day desired. 
He had actually held court In one of that financier's rooms. 
One expression In one of the judge's letters to this financier 
I shall always remember: "I am willing to go to the very 
verge of judicial discretion to serve your vast interests." The 
curious thing was that I was by no means certain that the 
judge himself was corrupt. He may have been; but I 
am inclined to think that, aside from his being a man of 
coarse moral fiber, the trouble lay chiefly In the fact that he 
had a genuine — if I had not so often seen It, I would say a 
wholly Inexplicable — reverence for the possessor of a great 
fortune as such. He sincerely believed that business was 
the end of existence, and that judge and legislator alike 
should do whatever was necessary to favor it ; and the bigger 



PRACTICAL POLITICS 85 

the business the more he desired to favor it. Big business 
of the kind that is allied with politics thoroughly appreciated 
the usefulness of such a judge, and every effort was strained 
to protect him. We fought hard — by "we" I mean some 
thirty or forty legislators, both Republicans and Democrats 
— -but the "black horse cavalry," and the timid good men, 
and the dull conservative men, were all against us ; and 
the vote in the Legislature was heavily against impeachment. 
The minority of the committee that investigated him, with 
Chapin at its head, recommended impeachment; the ar- 
gument for impeachment before the committee was made 
by Francis Lynde Stetson. 

It was my first experience of the kind. Various men whom 
I had known well socially and had been taught to look up to, 
prominent business men and lawyers, acted in a way which 
not only astounded me, but which I was quite unable to 
reconcile with the theories I had formed as to their high 
standing — I was little more than a year out of college at 
the time. Generally, as has been always the case since, they 
were careful to avoid any direct conversation with me on 
a concrete case of what we now call "privilege" in business 
and in politics, that is, of the alliance between business and 
politics which represents improper favors rendered to some 
men in return for improper conduct on the part of others 
being ignored or permitted. 

One member of a prominent law firm, an old family friend, 
did, however, take me out to lunch one day, evidently for 
the purpose of seeing just what it was that I wished and in- 
tended to do. I believe he had a genuine personal liking for 
me. He explained that I had done well in the Legislature, 
that it was a good thing to have made the "reform play," 
that I had shown that I possessed ability such as would make 
me useful in the right kind of law office or business concern ; 
but that I must not overplay my hand ; that I had gone far 
enough, and that now was the time to leave politics and 
identify myself with the right kind of people, the people 
who would always in the long run control others and obtain 
the real rewards which were worth having. I asked him if 
that meant that I was to yield to the ring in politics. He 



86 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

answered somewhat impatiently tliat I was entirely mis- 
taken (as in fact I was) about there being merely a political 
ring, of the kind of which the papers were fond of talking ; 
that the " ring," if it could be called such — that is, the 
inner circle — included certain big business men, and the 
politicians, lawyers, and judges who were in alliance with 
and to a certain extent dependent upon them, and that the 
successful man had to win his success by the backing of the 
same forces, whether in law, business, or politics. 

This conversation not only interested me, but made such 
an impression that I always remembered it, for it was the 
first glimpse I had of that combination between business 
and politics which I was in after years so often to oppose. 
In the America of that day, and especially among the people 
whom I knew, the successful business man was regarded 
by everybody as preeminently the good citizen. The ortho- 
dox books on political economy, not only in America but 
in England, were written for his especial glorification. The 
tangible rewards came to him, the admiration of his fellow- 
citizens of the respectable type was apt to be his, and the 
severe newspaper moralists who were never tired of denounc- 
ing politicians and political methods were wont to hold up 
"business methods" as the ideal which we were to strive to 
introduce into political life. Herbert Croly, in "The 
Promise of American Life," has set forth the reasons why 
our individualistic democracy — which taught that each 
man was to rely exclusively on himself, was in no way to be 
interfered with by others, and was to devote himself to his 
own personal welfare — necessarily produced the type of 
business man who sincerely believed, as did the rest of the 
community, that the individual who amassed a big fortune 
was the man who was the best and most typical American. 

In the Legislature the problems with which I dealt were 
mainly problems of honesty and decency and of legislative 
and administrative efficiency. They represented the effort, 
the wise, the vitally necessary effort, to get efficient and 
honest government. But as yet I understood little of the 
effort which was already beginning, for the most part under 
very bad leadership, to secure a more genuine social and 



PRACTICAL POLITICS 87 

industrial justice. Nor was I especially to blame for this. 
The good citizens I then knew best, even when themselves 
men of limited means — men like my colleague Billy O'Neill, 
and my backwoods friends Sewall and Dow — were no 
more awake than I was to the changing needs the changing 
times were bringing. Their outlook was as narrow as my 
own, and, within its limits, as fundamentally sound. 

I wish to dwell on the soundness of our outlook on life, 
even though as yet it was not broad enough. We were no 
respecters of persons. Where our vision was developed 
to a degree that enabled us to see crookedness, we opposed it 
whether in great or small. As a matter of fact, we found 
that it needed much more courage to stand up openly against 
labor men when they were wrong than against capitalists 
when they were wrong. The sins against labor are usually 
committed, and the improper services to capitalists are 
usually rendered, behind closed doors. Very often the 
man with the moral courage to speak in the open against 
labor when it is wrong is the only man anxious to do effective 
work for labor when labor is right. 

The only kinds of courage and honesty which are perma- 
nently useful to good institutions anywhere are those shown 
by men who decide all cases with impartial justice on grounds 
of conduct and not on grounds of class. We found that in 
the long run the men who in public blatantly insisted that 
labor was never wrong were the very men who in private 
could not be trusted to stand for labor when it was right. 
We grew heartily to distrust the reformer who never de- 
nounced wickedness unless it was embodied in a rich man. 
Human nature does not change; and that type of "re- 
former" is as noxious now as he ever was. The loud- 
mouthed upholder of popular rights who attacks wickedness 
only when it is allied with wealth, and who never publicly 
assails any misdeed, no matter how flagrant, if committed 
nominally in the interest of labor, has either a warped mind or 
a tainted soul, and should be trusted by no honest man. It 
was largely the indignant and contemptuous dislike aroused 
in our minds by the demagogues of this class which then 
prevented those of us whose instincts at bottom were sound 



88 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

from going as far as we ought to have gone along the lines of 
governmental control of corporations and governmental 
interference on behalf of labor. 

I did, however, have one exceedingly useful experience. 
A bill was introduced by the Cigar-Makers' Union to prohibit 
the manufacture of cigars in tenement-houses. I was ap- 
pointed one of a committee of three to investigate conditions 
in the tenement-houses and see if legislation should be had. 
Of my two colleagues on the committee, one took no interest 
in the measure and privately said he did not think it was 
right, but that he had to vote for it because the labor unions 
were strong in his district and he was pledged to support 
the bill. The other, a sporting Tammany man who after- 
wards abandoned politics for the race-track, was a very good 
fellow. He told me frankly that he had to be against the 
bill because certain interests which were all-powerful and 
with which he had dealings required him to be against it, 
but that I was a free agent, and that if I would look into the 
matter he believed I would favor the legislation. As a 
matter of fact, I had supposed I would be against the legis- 
lation, and I rather think that I was put on the committee 
with that idea, for the respectable people I knew were 
against it ; it was contrary to the principles of political 
economy of the laissezfaire kind ; and the business men who 
spoke to me about it shook their heads and said that it was 
designed to prevent a man doing as he wished and as he had 
a right to do with what was his own. 

However, my first visits to the tenement-house districts 
in question made me feel that, whatever the theories might 
be, as a matter of practical common sense I could not 
conscientiously vote for the continuance of the conditions 
which I saw. These conditions rendered it impossible for 
the families of the tenement-house workers to live so that the 
children might grow up fitted for the exacting duties of 
American citizenship. I visited the tenement-houses once 
with my colleagues of the committee, once with some 
of the labor union representatives, and once or twice by 
myself. In a few of the tenement-houses there were suites 
of rooms ample in number where the work on the tobacco 



PRACTICAL POLITICS 89 

was done in rooms not occupied for cooking or sleeping or 
living. In the overwhelming majority of cases, however, 
there were one, two, or three room apartments, and the work 
of manufacturing the tobacco by men, women, and children 
went on day and night in the eating, living, and sleeping 
rooms — sometimes in one room. I have always remembered 
one room in which two families were living. On my inquiry 
as to who the third adult male was I was told that he was a 
boarder with one of the families. There were several chil- 
dren, three men, and two women in this room. The tobacco 
was stowed about everywhere, alongside the foul bedding, 
and in a corner where there were scraps of food. The men, 
women, and children in this room worked by day and far 
on into the evening, and they slept and ate there. They 
were Bohemians, unable to speak English, except that one 
of the children knew enough to act as interpreter. 

Instead of opposing the bill I ardently championed it. 
It was a poorly drawn measure, and the Governor, Grover 
Cleveland, was at first doubtful about signing it. The Cigar- 
Makers' Union then asked mc to appear before the Governor 
and argue for it. I accordingly did so, acting as spokesman 
for the battered, undersized foreigners who represented the 
Union and the workers. The Governor signed the bill. 
Afterwards this tenement-house cigar legislation was de- 
clared invalid by the Court of Appeals in the Jacobs decision. 
Jacobs was one of the rare tenement-house manufacturers 
of cigars who occupied quite a suite of rooms, so that in his 
case the living conditions were altogether exceptional. 
What the reason was which influenced those bringing the 
suit to select the exceptional instead of the average worker 
I do not know; of course such action was precisely the 
action which those most interested in having the law broken 
down were anxious to see taken. The Court of Appeals 
declared the law unconstitutional, and in their decision 
the judges reprobated the law as an assault upon the "hal- 
lowed" influences of "home." It was this case which first 
waked me to a dim and partial understanding of the fact 
that the courts were not necessarily the best judges of what 
should be done to better social and industrial conditions. 



90 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

The judges who rendered this decision were well-meaning 
men. They knew nothing whatever of tenement-house 
conditions ; they knew nothing whatever of the needs, or of 
the life and labor, of three-fourths of their fellow-citizens in 
great cities. They knew legalism, but not life. Their 
choice of the words "hallowed" and "home," as applicable 
to the revolting conditions attending the manufacture of 
cigars in tenement-houses, showed that they had no idea what 
it was that they were deciding. Imagine the "hallowed" 
associations of a "home" consisting of one room where two 
families, one of them with a boarder, live, eat, and work 1 
This decision completely blocked tenement-house reform 
legislation in New York for a score of years, and hampers 
it to this day. It was one of the most serious setbacks which 
the cause of industrial and social progress and reform ever 
received. 

I had been brought up to hold the courts in especial rev- 
erence. The people with whom I was most intimate were 
apt to praise the courts for just such decisions as this, and 
to speak of them as bulwarks against disorder and barriers 
against demagogic legislation. These were the same people 
with whom the judges who rendered these decisions were 
apt to foregather at social clubs, or dinners, or in private 
life. Very naturally they all tended to look at things from 
the same standpoint. Of course it took more than one 
experience such as this Tenement Cigar Case to shake me 
out of the attitude in which I was brought up. But various 
decisions, not only of the New York court but of certain 
other State courts and even of the United States Supreme 
Court, during the quarter of a century following the passage 
of this tenement-house legislation, did at last thoroughly 
wake me to the actual fact. I grew to realize that all that 
Abraham Lincoln had said about the Dred Scott decision 
could be said with equal truth and justice about the numer- 
ous decisions which in our own day were erected as bars 
across the path of social reform, and which brought to naught 
so muchof the effort to secure justice and fairdealing forwork- 
ingmen and workingwomen, and for plain citizens generally. 

Some of the wickedness and inefficiency in public life 




By courtesy of Harper and Brothers. 

" Reform without Bloodshed." 

A cartcion hv Thomas Nast in Harper's Weekly, of April 19, 1884, entitled 
■' Governor Cleveland and Theodore Roosevelt at their work." 



92 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

was then displayed in simpler fashion than would probably 
now be the case. Once or twice I was a member of com- 
mittees which looked into gross and widely ramifying 
governmental abuses. On the whole, the most important 
part I played was in the third Legislature in which I served, 
when I acted as chairman of a committee which investi- 
gated various phases of New York City official life. 

The most important of the reform measures our com- 
mittee recommended was the bill taking away from the 
Aldermen their power of confirmation over the Mayor's 
appointments. We found that it was possible to get citizens 
interested in the character and capacity of the head of the 
city, so that they would exercise some intelligent interest 
in his conduct and qualifications. But we found that as a 
matter of fact it was impossible to get them interested in 
the Aldermen and other subordinate officers. In actual 
practice the Aldermen were merely the creatures of the local 
ward bosses or of the big municipal bosses, and where they 
controlled the appointments the citizens at large had no 
chance whatever to make their will felt. Accordingly we 
fought for the principle, which I believe to be of universal 
application, that what is needed in our popular government 
is to give plenty of power to a few officials, and to make these 
few officials genuinely and readily responsible to the people 
for the exercise of that power. Taking away the confirming 
power of the Board of Aldermen did not give the citizens of 
New York good government. We knew that if they chose 
to elect the wrong kind of Mayor they would have bad 
government, no matter what the form of the law was. But 
we did secure to them the chance to get good government if 
they desired, and this was impossible as long as the old sys- 
tem remained. The change was fought in the way in which 
all similar changes always are fought. The corrupt and 
interested politicians were against it, and the battle-cries 
they used, which rallied to them most of the unthinking 
conservatives, were that we were changing the old consti- 
tutional system, that we were defacing the monuments of 
the wisdom of the founders of the government, that we were 
destroying that distinction between legislative and executive 



PRACTICAL POLITICS 93 

power which was the bulwark of our liberties, and that we 
were violent and unscrupulous radicals with no reverence for 
the past. 

Of course the investigations, disclosures, and proceedings of 
the investigating committee of which I was chairman brought 
me into bitter personal conflict with very powerful financiers, 
very powerful politicians, and with certain newspapers 
which these financiers and politicians controlled. A number 
of able and unscrupulous men were fighting, some for their 
financial lives, and others to keep out of unpleasantly close 
neighborhood to State's prison. This meant that there 
were blows to be taken as well as given. In such political 
struggles, those who went in for the kind of thing that I 
did speedily excited animosities among strong and cunning 
men who would stop at little to gratify their animosity. 
Any man engaged in this particular type of militant and prac- 
tical reform movement was soon made to feel that he had 
better not undertake to push matters home unless his own 
character was unassailable. On one of the investigating 
committees on which I served there was a countryman, a 
very able man, who, when he reached New York City, 
felt as certain Americans do when they go to Paris — that 
the moral restraints of his native place no longer applied. 
With all his ability, he was not shrewd enough to realize that 
the Police Department was having him as well as the rest of 
us carefully shadowed. He was caught red-handed by a 
plain-clothes man doing what he had no business to do ; 
and from that time on he dared not act save as those who 
held his secret permitted him to act. Thenceforth those 
officials who stood behind the Police Department had one 
man on the committee on whom they could count. I never 
saw terror more ghastly on a strong man's face than on the 
face of this man on one or two occasions when he feared that 
events in the committee might take such a course as to 
force him into a position where his colleagues would expose 
him even if the city officials did not. However, he escaped, 
for we were never able to get the kind of proof which would 
warrant our asking for the action in which this man could 
not have joined. 



94 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

Traps were set for more than one of us, and if we had 
walked into these traps our pubUc careers would have ended, 
at least so far as following them under the conditions which 
alone make it worth while to be in public life at all. A man 
can of course hold public office, and many a man does hold 
public office, and lead a public career of a sort, even if 
there are other men who possess secrets about him which 
he cannot afford to have divulged. But no man can lead a 
public career really worth leading, no man can act with 
rugged independence in serious crises, nor strike at great 
abuses, nor afford to make powerful and unscrupulous foes, 
if he is himself vulnerable in his private character. Nor 
will clean conduct by itself enable a man to render good 
service. I have always been fond of Josh Billings's remark 
that "it is much easier to be a harmless dove than a wise 
serpent." There are plenty of decent legislators, and 
plenty of able legislators ; but the blamelessness and the 
fighting edge are not always combined. Both qualities 
are necessary for the man who is to wage active battle against 
the powers that prey. He must be clean of life, so that he 
can laugh when his public or his private record is searched ; 
and yet being clean of life will not avail him if he is either 
foolish or timid. He must walk warily and fearlessly, 
and while he should never brawl if he can avoid it, he must 
be ready to hit hard if the need arises. Let him remember, 
by the way, that the unforgivable crime is soft hitting. Do 
not hit at all if it can be avoided ; but never hit softly. 

Like most young men in politics, I went through various 
oscillations of feeling before I "found myself." At one 
period I became so impressed with the virtue of complete 
independence that I proceeded to act on each case purely 
as I personally viewed it, without paying any heed to the 
principles and prejudices of others. The result was that I 
speedily and deservedly lost all power of accomplishing 
anything at all ; and I thereby learned the invaluable lesson 
that in the practical activities of life no man can render the 
highest service unless he can act in combination with his 
fellows, which means a certain amount of give-and-take 
between him and them. Again, I at one period began to 



PRACTICAL POLITICS 95 

believe that I had a future before me, and that it behooved 
me to be very far-sighted and scan each action carefully 
with a view to its possible effect on that future. This 
speedily made me useless to the public and an object of 
aversion to myself; and I then made up my mind that I 
would try not to think of the future at all, but would proceed 
on the assumption that each ofhce I held would be the last 
I ever should hold, and that I would confine myself to trying 
to do my work as well as possible while I held that office. 
I found that for me personally this was the only way in which 
I could cither enjoy myself or render good service to the 
country, and I never afterwards deviated from this plan. 

As regards political advancement the bosses could of 
course do a good deal. At that time the warring Stalwart 
and Half-Brecd factions of the Republican party were sup- 
porting respectively President Arthur and Senator Miller. 
Neither side cared for me. The first year in the Legislature I 
rose to a position of leadership, so that in the second year, 
when the Republicans were in a minority, I received the 
minority nomination for Speaker, although I was still the 
youngest man in the House, being twenty-four years old. 
The third year the Republicans carried the Legislature, and 
the bosses at once took a hand in the Speakership contest. 
I made a stout fight for the nomination, but the bosses of the 
two factions, the Stalwarts and the Half-Breeds, combined 
and I was beaten. I was much chagrined for the moment. 
But the fact that I had fought hard and efficiently, even 
though defeated, and that I had made the fight single- 
handed, with no machine back of me, assured my standing 
as floor leader. My defeat in the end materially strength- 
ened my position, and enabled me to accomplish far more 
than I could have accomplished as Speaker. As so often, 
I found that the titular position was of no consequence ; 
what counted was the combination of the opportunity with 
the ability to accomplish results. The achievement was 
the all-important thing ; the position, whether titularly high 
or low, was of consequence only in so far as it widened the 
chance for achievement. After the session closed four of 
us who looked at politics from the same standpoint and were 



96 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

known as Independent or Anti-Machine Republicans were 
sent by the State Convention as delegates-at-large to the Re- 
publican National Convention of 1884, where I advocated, as 
vigorously as I knew how, the nomination of Senator George 
F. Edmunds. Mr. Edmunds was defeated and Mr. Blaine 
nominated. Mr. Blaine was clearly the choice of the rank 
and file of the party; his nomination was won in fair and 
aboveboard fashion, because the rank and file of the party 
stood back of him ; and I supported him to the best of my 
ability in the ensuing campaign. 

The Speakership contest enlightened me as regards more 
things than the attitude of the bosses. I had already had 
some exasperating experiences with the "silk stocking" 
reformer type, as Abraham Lincoln called it, the gentlemen 
who were very nice, very refined, who shook their heads 
over political corruption and discussed it in drawing- 
rooms and parlors, but who were wholly unable to grapple 
with real men in real life. They were apt vociferously to 
demand "reform" as if it were some concrete substance, like 
cake, which could be handed out at will, in tangible masses, 
if only the demand were urgent enough. These parlor 
reformers made up for inefficiency in action by zeal in criti- 
cising ; and they delighted in criticising the men who really 
were doing the things which they said ought to be done, but 
which they lacked the sinewy power to do. They often 
upheld ideals which were not merely impossible but highly 
undesirable, and thereby played into the hands of the very 
politicians to whom they professed to be most hostile. 
Moreover, if they believed that their own interests, indi- 
vidually or as a class, were jeoparded, they were apt to show 
no higher standards than did the men they usually de- 
nounced. 

One of their shibboleths was that the office should seek 
the man and not the man the office. This is entirely true of 
certain offices at certain times. It is entirely untrue when 
the circumstances are different. It would have been un- 
necessary and undesirable for Washington to have sought 
the Presidency. But if Abraham Lincoln had not sought 
the Presidency he never would have been nominated. The 



PRACTICAL POLITICS 97 

objection in such a case as this Hes not to seeking the office, 
but to seeking it in any but an honorable and proper manner. 
The effect of the shibboleth in question is usually merely to 
put a premium on hypocrisy, and therefore to favor the 
creature who is willing to rise by hypocrisy. When I ran 
for Speaker, the whole bodyof machine politicians was against 
me, and my only chance lay in arousing the people in the 
different districts. To do this I had to visit the districts, 
put the case fairly before the men whom I saw, and make 
them understand that I was really making a fight and would 
stay in the fight to the end. Yet there were reformers who 
shook their heads and deplored my "activity" in the canvass. 
Of course the one thing which corrupt machine politicians 
most desire is to have decent men frown on the activity, 
that is, on the efficiency, of the honest man who genuinely 
wishes to reform politics. 

If efficiency is left solely to bad men, and if virtue is 
confined solely to inefficient men, the result cannot be happy. 
When I entered politics there were, as there always had 
been — and as there always will be — any number of bad 
men in politics who were thoroughly efficient, and any num- 
ber of good men who would like to have done lofty things 
in politics but who were thoroughly inefficient. If I wished 
to accomplish anything for the country, my business was 
to combine decency and efficiency; to be a thoroughly 
practical man of high ideals who did his best to reduce 
those ideals to actual practice. This was my ideal, and 
to the best of my ability I strove to live up to it. 

To a young man, life in the New York Legislature was 
always interesting and often entertaining. There was al- 
ways a struggle of some kind on hand. Sometimes it was 
on a naked question of right and wrong. Sometimes it was 
on a question of real constructive statesmanship. Moreover, 
there were all kinds of humorous incidents, the humor 
being usually of the unconscious kind. In one session of 
the Legislature the New York City Democratic representa- 
tives were split into two camps, and there were two rivals 
for leadership. One of these was a thoroughly good-hearted, 
happy-go-lucky person who was afterwards for several 



98 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

years in Congress. He had been a local magistrate and was 
called Judge. Generally he and I were friendly, but occasion- 
ally I did something that irritated him. He was always 
willing to vote for any other member's bill himself, and 
he regarded it as narrow-minded for any one to oppose one 
of his bills, especially if the opposition was upon the ground 
that it was unconstitutional — for his views of the Constitu- 
tion were so excessively liberal as to make even me feel as 
if I belonged to the straitest sect of strict constructionists. 
On one occasion he had a bill to appropriate money, with 
obvious impropriety, for the relief of some miscreant whom 
he styled "one of the honest yeomanry of the State." 
When I explained to him that it was clearly unconstitutional, 
he answered, "Me friend, the Constitution don't touch 
little things like that," and then added, with an ingratiating 
smile, "Anyhow, I'd never allow the Constitution to come 
between friends." At the time I was looking over the proofs 
of Mr. Bryce's "American Commonwealth," and I told 
him the incident. He put it into the first edition of the 
"Commonwealth" ; whether it is in the last edition or not, 
I cannot say. 

On another occasion the same gentleman came to an issue 
with me in a debate, and wound up his speech by explaining 
that I occupied what "lawyers would call a quasi position 
on the bill." His rival was a man of totally different type, 
a man of great natural dignity, also born in Ireland. He 
had served with gallantry in the Civil War. After the close 
of the war he organized an expedition to conquer Canada. 
The expedition, however, got so drunk before reaching 
Albany that it was there incarcerated in jail, whereupon 
its leader abandoned it and went into New York politics 
instead. He was a man of influence, and later occupied in 
the Police Department the same position as Commissioner 
which I myself at one time occupied. He felt that his 
rival had gained too much glory at my expense, and, walking 
over with ceremonious solemnity to where the said rival was 
sitting close beside me, he said to him : "I would like you to 
know, Mr. Cameron [Cameron, of course, was not the real 
name], that Mr. Roosevelt knows more law in a wake than 



PRACTICAL POLITICS 99 

you do in a month ; and, more than that, Alichael Cameron, 
what do you mane by quoting Latin on the floor of this 
House when you don't know the alpha and omayga of the 
language ?" 

There was in the Legislature, during the deadlock above 
mentioned, a man whom I will call Brogan. He looked like 
a serious elderly frog. I never heard him speak more than 
once. It was before the Legislature was organized, or had 
adopted any rules ; and each day the only business was 
for the clerk to call the roll. One day Brogan suddenly 
rose, and the following dialogue occurred : 

Brogan. Misther Clu-r-r-k ! 

The Clerk. The gentleman from New York. 

Brogan. I rise to a point of ordher under the rules ! 

The Clerk. There are no rules. 

Brogan. Thin I object to them ! 

The Clerk. There are no rules to object to. 

Brogan. Oh ! [nonplussed ; but immediately recovering 
himself]. Thin I move that they be amended until there 
ar-r-re ! 

The deadlock was tedious ; and we hailed with joy such 
enlivening incidents as the above. 

During my three years' service in the Legislature I worked 
on a very simple philosophy of government. It was that 
personal character and initiative are the prime requisites in 
political and social life. It was not only a good but an 
absolutely indispensable theory as far as it went; but 
it was defective in that it did not sufficiently allow 
for the need of collective action. I shall never forget 
the men with whom I worked hand in hand in these 
legislative struggles, not only my fellow-legislators, but 
some of the newspaper reporters, such as Spinney and 
Cunningham ; and then in addition the men in the various 
districts who helped us. We had made up our minds that 
we must not fight fire with fire, that on the contrary the 
way to win out was to equal our foes in practical efficiency 
and yet to stand at the opposite plane from them in applied 
morality. 

It was not always easy to keep the just middle, especially 



loo THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

when it happened that on one side there were corrupt and 
unscrupulous demagogues, and on the other side corrupt 
and unscrupulous reactionaries. Our effort was to hold the 
scales even between both. We tried to stand with the cause 
of righteousness even though its advocates were anything 
but righteous. We endeavored to cut out the abuses of 
property, even though good men of property were misled 
into upholding those abuses. We refused to be frightened 
into sanctioning improper assaults upon property, although 
we knew that the champions of property themselves did 
things that were wicked and corrupt. We were as yet by 
no means as thoroughly awake as we ought to have been to 
the need of controlling big business and to the damage done 
by the combination of politics with big business. In this 
matter I was not behind the rest of my friends ; indeed, I 
was ahead of them, for no serious leader in political life 
then appreciated the prime need of grappling with these 
questions. One partial reason — not an excuse or a justi- 
fication, but a partial reason — for my slowness in grasping 
the importance of action in these matters was the corrupt 
and unattractive nature of so many of the men who cham- 
pioned popular reforms, their insincerity, and the folly 
of so many of the actions which they advocated. Even 
at that date I had neither sympathy with nor admiration 
for the man who was merely a money king, and I did not 
regard the "money touch," when divorced from other quali- 
ties, as entitling a man to either respect or consideration. 
As recited above, we did on more than one occasion fight 
battles, in which we neither took nor gave quarter, against 
the most prominent and powerful financiers and financial 
interests of the day. But most of the fights in which we were 
engaged were for pure honesty and decency, and they were 
more apt to be against that form of corruption which found 
its expression in demagogy than against that form of cor- 
ruption which defended or advocated privilege. Funda- 
mentally, our fight was part of the eternal war against the 
Powers that Prey ; and we cared not a whit in what rank 
of life these powers were found. 

To play the demagogue for purposes of self-interest is a 



PRACTICAL POLITICS loi 

cardinal sin against the people in a democracy, exactly as 
to play the courtier for such purposes is a cardinal sin against 
the people under other forms of government. A man who 
stays long in our American political life, if he has in his soul 
the generous desire to do effective service for great causes, 
inevitably grows to regard himself merely as one of many 
instruments, all of which it may be necessary to use, one 
at one time, one at another, in achieving the triumph of 
those causes ; and whenever the usefulness of any one has 
been exhausted, it is to be thrown aside. If such a man is 
wise, he will gladly do the thing that is next, when the time 
and the need come together, without asking what the future 
holds for him. Let the half-god play his part well and man- 
fully, and then be content to draw aside when the god 
appears. Nor should he feel vain regrets that to another it 
is given to render greater services and reap a greater reward. 
Let it be enough for him that he too has served, and that 
by doing well he has prepared the way for the other man 
who can do better. 




Copyright, by Underwood & Underwood . 

President Roosevelt returning from the Bear Hunt, Newcastle, Colorado, 

IN 1905. 



CHAPTER IV 

IN COWBOY LAND 

THOUGH I had previously made a trip into the then 
Territory of Dakota, beyond the Red River, it was 
not until 1883 that I went to the Little Missouri, 
and there took hold of two cattle ranches, the 
Chimney Butte and the Elkhorn. 

It was still the Wild West in those days, the Far West, 
the West of Owen Wister's stories and Frederic Remington's 
drawings, the West of the Indian and the buiTalo-hunter, 
the soldier and the cow-puncher. That land of the West has 
gone now, "gone, gone with lost Atlantis," gone to the isle of 
ghosts and of strange dead memories. It was a land of 
vast silent spaces, of lonely rivers, and of plains where the 
wild game stared at the passing horseman. It was a land 
of scattered ranches, of herds of long-horned cattle, and of 
reckless riders who unmoved looked in the eyes of life or of 
death. In that land we led a free and hardy life, with horse 
and with rifle. We worked under the scorching midsummer 
sun, when the wide plains shimmered and wavered in the 
heat ; and we knew the freezing misery of riding night 
guard round the cattle in the late fall round-up. In the 
soft springtime the stars were glorious in our eyes each night 
before we fell asleep ; and in the winter we rode through 
blinding blizzards, when the driven snow-dust burnt our 
faces. There were monotonous days, as we guided the 
trail cattle or the beef herds, hour after hour, at the slowest 
of walks ; and minutes or hours teeming with excitement as 
we stopped stampedes or swam the herds across rivers 
treacherous with quicksands or brimmed with running ice. 
We knew toil and hardship and hunger and thirst; and we 

103 



I04 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

saw men die violent deaths as they worked among the horses 
and cattle, or fought in evil feuds with one another ; but 
we felt the beat of hardy life in our veins, and ours was the 
glory of work and the joy of living. 

It was right and necessary that this life should pass, for 
the safety of our country lies in its being made the country 
of the small home-maker. The great unfenced ranches, 
in the days of "free grass," necessarily represented a tem- 
porary stage in our history. The large migratory flocks 
of sheep, each guarded by the hired shepherds of absentee 
owners, were the first enemies of the cattlemen ; and owing 
to the way they ate out the grass and destroyed all other 
vegetation, these roving sheep bands represented little of 
permanent good to the country. But the homesteaders, 
the permanent settlers, the men who took up each his own 
farm on which he lived and brought up his family, these 
represented from the National standpoint the most desirable 
of all possible users of, and dwellers on, the soil. Their 
advent meant the breaking up of the big ranches ; and the 
change was a National gain, although to some of us an 
individual loss. 

I first reached the Little Missouri on a Northern Pacific 
train about three in the morning of a cool September day in 
1883. Aside from the station, the only building was a 
ramshackle structure called the Pyramid Park Hotel. I 
dragged my duffle-bag thither, and hammered at the door 
until the frowsy proprietor appeared, muttering oaths. He 
ushered me upstairs, where I was given one of the fourteen 
beds in the room which by itself constituted the entire upper 
floor. Next day I walked over to the abandoned army 
post, and, after some hours among the gray log shacks, a 
ranchman who had driven into the station agreed to take me 
out to his ranch, the Chimney Butte ranch, where he was 
living with his brother and their partner. 

The ranch was a log structure with a dirt roof, a corral for 
the horses near by, and a chicken-house jabbed against the 
rear of the ranch house. Inside there was only one room, 
with a table, three or four chairs, a cooking-stove, and three 
bunks. The owners were Sylvane and Joe Ferris and 




copyright, Moffett Studio, Clilcago. 



A Reunion. 



" Twenty-nine years later my four friends of that night (of bobcats and old sledge) were 
delegates to the First Progressive National Convention at Chicago." — Mr. Roosevelt, 
seated. From left to right, J. A. Ferris, S. M. Ferris, W. J. Merrifield, G. W. Meyer. 



io6 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

William J. Merrifield. Later all three of them held my 
commissions while I was President. Merrifield was Marshal 
of Montana, and as Presidential elector cast the vote of that 
State for me in 1904; Sylvane Ferris was Land Officer in 
North Dakota, and Joe Ferris Postmaster at Medora. 
There was a fourth man, George Meyer, who also worked 
for me later. That evening we all played old sledge round 
the table, and at one period the game was interrupted by a 
frightful squawking outside which told us that a bobcat 
had made a raid on the chicken-house. 

After a buffalo hunt with my original friend, Joe Ferris, 
I entered into partnership with Merrifield and Sylvane 
Ferris, and we started a cow ranch, with the maltese cross 
brand — always known as "maltee cross," by the way, as 
the general impression along the Little Missouri was that 
"maltese" must be a plural. Twenty-nine years later 
my four friends of that night were delegates to the First 
Progressive National Convention at Chicago. They were 
among my most constant companions for the few years next 
succeeding the evening when the bobcat interrupted the 
game of old sledge. I lived and worked with them on the 
ranch, and with them and many others like them on the 
round-up ; and I brought out from Maine, in order to start 
the Elkhorn ranch lower down the river, my two back- 
woods friends Sewall and Dow. My brands for the lower 
ranch were the elkhorn and triangle. 

I do not believe there ever was any life more attractive 
to a vigorous young fellow than life on a cattle ranch in 
those days. It was a fine, healthy life, too; it taught a 
man self-reliance, hardihood, and the value of instant 
decision — in short, the virtues that ought to come from life 
in the open country. I enjoyed the life to the full. After 
the first year I built on the Elkhorn ranch a long, low ranch 
house of hewn logs, with a veranda, and with. In addition to 
the other rooms, a bedroom for myself, and a sitting-room 
with a big fire-place. I got out a rocking-chair — I am very 
fond of rocking-chairs — and enough books to fill two or 
three shelves, and a rubber bathtub so that I could get a 
bath. And then I do not see how any one could have lived 



IN COWBOY LAND 107 

more comfortably. We had buffalo robes and bearskins of 
our own killing. We always kept the house clean — using 
the word in a rather large sense. There were at least two 
rooms that were always warm, even in the bitterest weather; 
and we had plenty to eat. Commonly the mainstay of 
every meal was game of our own killing, usually antelope 
or deer, sometimes grouse or ducks, and occasionally, in the 
earlier days, buffalo or elk. We also had flour and bacon, 
sugar, salt, and canned tomatoes. And later, when some of 
the men married and brought out their wives, we had all 
kinds of good things, such as jams and jellies made from the 
wild plums and the buffalo berries, and potatoes from the 
forlorn little garden patch. Moreover, we had milk. Most 
ranchmen at that time never had milk. I knew more than 
one ranch with ten thousand head of cattle where there was 
not a cow that could be milked. We made up our minds 
that we would be more enterprising. Accordingly, we 
started to domesticate some of the cows. Our first effort 
was not successful, chiefly because we did not devote the 
needed time and patience to the matter. And we found 
that to race a cow two miles at full speed on horseback, then 
rope her, throw her, and turn her upside down to milk her, 
while exhilarating as a pastime, was not productive of re- 
sults. Gradually we accumulated tame cows, and, after we 
had thinned out the bobcats and coyotes, more chickens. 
The ranch house stood on the brink of a low bluff over- 
looking the broad, shallow bed of the Little Missouri, 
through which at most seasons there ran only a trickle of 
water, while in times of freshet it was filled brimful with the 
boiling, foaming, muddy torrent. There was no neighbor 
for ten or fifteen miles on either side of me. The river 
twisted down in long curves between narrow bottoms 
bordered by sheer cliff walls, for the Bad Lands, a chaos of 
peaks, plateaus, and ridges, rose abruptly from the edges 
of the level, tree-clad, or grassy, alluvial meadows. In 
front of the ranch-house veranda was a row of cottonwood 
trees with gray-green leaves which quivered all day long 
if there was a breath of air. From these trees came the 
far-away, melancholy cooing of mourning doves, and little 



/ 



loS THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

owls perched in them and called tremulously at night. In the 
long summer afternoons we would sometimes sit on the piazza, 
when there was no work to be done, for an hour or two at a 
time, watching the cattle on the sand-bars, and the sharply 
channeled and strangely carved amphitheater of cliffs 
across the bottom opposite ; while the vultures wheeled 
overhead, their black shadows gliding across the glaring 
white of the dry river-bed. Sometimes from the ranch we 
saw deer, and once when we needed meat I shot one across 
the river as I stood on the piazza. In the winter, in the 
days of iron cold, when everything was white under the 
snow, the river lay in its bed fixed and immovable as a 
bar of bent steel, and then at night wolves and lynxes 
traveled up and down it as if it had been a highway passing 
in front of the ranch house. Often in the late fall or early 
winter, after a hard day's hunting, or when returning from 
one of the winter line camps, we did not reach the ranch 
until hours after sunset ; and after the weary tramping in the 
cold it was keen pleasure to catch the first red gleam of the 
fire-lit windows across the snowy wastes. 

The Elkhorn ranch house was built mainly by Sewall 
and Dow, who, like most men from the Maine woods, were 
mighty with the ax. I could chop fairly well for an amateur, 
but I could not do one-third the work they could. One 
day when we were cutting down the cottonwood trees, to 
begin our building operations, I heard some one ask Dow 
what the total cut had been, and Dow, not realizing that I 
was within hearing, answered: "Well, Bill cut down fifty- 
three, I cut forty-nine, and the boss he beavered down 
seventeen." Those who have seen the stump of a tree 
which has been gnawed down by a beaver will understand 
the exact force of the comparison. 

In those days on a cow ranch the men were apt to be away 
on the various round-ups at least half the time. It was 
interesting and exciting work, and except for the lack of 
sleep on the spring and summer round-ups it was not ex- 
hausting work ; compared to lumbering or mining or black- 
smithing, to sit in the saddle is an easy form of labor. The 
ponies were of course grass-fed and unshod. Each man had 



/ 



IN COWBOY LAND 109 

his own string of nine or ten. One pony would be used for 
the morning work, one for the afternoon, and neither would 
again be used for the next three days. A separate pony 
was kept for night riding. 

The spring and early summer round-ups were especially 
for the branding of calves. There was much hard work and 
some risk on a round-up, but also much fun. The meeting- 
place was appointed \^^eeks beforehand, and all the ranchmen 
of the territory to be covered by the round-up sent their 
representatives. There were no fences in the West that I 
knew, and their place was taken by the cowboy and the brand- 
ing-iron. The cattle wandered free. Each calf was branded 
with the brand of the cow it was following. Sometimes in 
winter there was what we called line riding; that is, camps 
were established and the line riders traveled a definite beat 
across the desolate wastes of snow, to and fro from one 
camp to another, to prevent the cattle from drifting. But as 
a rule nothing was done to keep the cattle in any one place. 
In the spring there was a general round-up in each locality. 
Each outfit took part in its own round-up, and all the outfits 
of a given region combined to send representatives to the 
two or three round-ups that covered the neighborhoods near 
by into which their cattle might drift. For example, our 
Little Missouri round-up generally worked down the river 
from a distance of some fifty or sixty miles above my ranch 
towards the Kildeer Mountains, about the same distance 
below. In addition we would usually send representatives 
to the Yellowstone round-up, and to the round-up along 
the upper Little Missouri; and, moreover, if we heard that 
cattle had drifted, perhaps toward the Indian reservation 
southeast of us, we would send a wagon and rider after them. 

At the meeting-point, which might be in the valley of a 
half-dry stream, or in some broad bottom of the river itself, 
or perchance by a couple of ponds under some queerly 
shaped butte that was a landmark for the region round 
about, we would all gather on the appointed day. The 
chuck-wagons, containing the bedding and food, each drawn 
by four horses and driven by the teamster cook, would come 
jolting and rattling over the uneven sward. Accompanying 



no THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

each wagon were eight or ten riders, the cow-punchers, 
while their horses, a band of a hundred or so, were driven 
by the two herders, one of whom was known as the day 
wrangler and one as the night wrangler. The men were 
lean, sinewy fellows, accustomed to riding half-broken 
horses at any speed over any country by day or by night. 
They wore flannel shirts, with loose handkerchiefs knotted 
round their necks, broad hats, high-heeled boots with jingling 
spurs, and sometimes leather shaps, although often they 
merely had their trousers tucked into the tops of their high 
boots. There was a good deal of rough horse-play, and, 
as with any other gathering of men or boys of high animal 
spirits, the horse-play sometimes became very rough 
indeed ; and as the men usually carried revolvers, and as 
there were occasionally one or two noted gun-fighters among 
them, there was now and then a shooting affray. A man 
who was a coward or who shirked his work had a bad time, 
of course ; a man could not afford to let himself be bullied or 
treated as a butt; and, on the other hand, if he was "look- 
ing for a fight," he was certain to find it. But my own 
experience was that if a man did not talk until his associates 
knew him well and liked him, and if he did his work, he 
never had any difficulty in getting on. In my own round- 
up district I speedily grew to be friends with most of the 
men. When I went among strangers I always had to spend 
twenty-four hours in living down the fact that I wore 
spectacles, remaining as long as I could judiciously deaf to 
any side remarks about "four eyes," unless it became evident 
that my being quiet was misconstrued and that it was better 
to bring matters to a head at once. 

If, for instance, I was sent off to represent the Little 
Missouri brands on some neighboring round-up, such as the 
Yellowstone, I usually showed that kind of diplomacy 
which consists in not uttering one word that can be avoided. 
I would probably have a couple of days' solitary ride, 
mounted on one horse and driving eight or ten others before 
me, one of them carrying my bedding. Loose horses 
drive best at a trot, or canter, and if a man is traveling alone 
in this fashion it is a good thing to have them reach the 







CuuAa d. 



U i.<^^i~ 



Ji^rh^' 










S^tidzet^ 






'^'^^-^ 










The Elkhorn Ranch House and the Deeds of Purchase. 



112 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

camp ground sufficiently late to make them desire to feed 
and sleep where they are until morning. In consequence 
I never spent more than two days on the journey from what- 
ever the point was at which I left the Little Missouri, sleep- 
ing the one night for as limited a number of hours as possible. 

As soon as I reached the meeting-place I would find out 
the wagon to which I was assigned. Riding to it, I turned 
my horses into the saddle-band and reported to the wagon 
boss, or, in his absence, to the cook — always a privileged 
character, who was allowed and expected to order men 
around. He would usually grumble savagely and profanely 
about my having been put with his wagon, but this was 
merely conventional on his part ; and if I sat down and said 
nothing he would probably soon ask me if I wanted any- 
thing to eat, to which the correct answer was that I was not 
hungry and would wait until meal-time. The bedding rolls 
of the riders would be strewn round the grass, and I would 
put mine down a little outside the ring, where I would not 
be in any one's way, with my six or eight branding-irons 
beside it. The men would ride in, laughing and talking 
with one another, and perhaps nodding to me. One of 
their number, usually the wagon foreman, might put some 
question to me as to what brands I represented, but no 
other word would be addressed to me, nor would I be ex- 
pected to volunteer any conversation. Supper would con- 
sist of bacon, Dutch oven bread, and possibly beef; once I 
won the good graces of my companions at the outset by 
appearing with two antelope which I had shot. After supper 
I would roll up in my bedding as soon as possible, and the 
others would follow suit at their pleasure. 

At three in the morning or thereabouts, at a yell from the 
cook, all hands would turn hurriedly out. Dressing was a 
simple affair. Then each man rolled and corded his bedding 
— if he did not, the cook would leave it behind and he would 
go without any for the rest of the trip — and came to the 
fire, where he picked out a tin cup, tin plate, and knife and 
fork, helped himself to coffee and to whatever food there was, 
and ate it standing or squatting as best suited him. Dawn 
was probably breaking by this time, and the trampling of 



IN COWBOY LAND 113 

unshod hoofs showed that the night wrangler was bringing 
in the pony herd. Two of the men would then run ropes 
from the wagon at right angles to one another, and into this 
as a corral the horses would be driven. Each man might 
rope one of his own horses, or more often point it out to the 
most skillful roper of the outfit, who would rope it for him 
— ■ for if the man was an unskillful roper and roped the 
wrong horse or roped the horse in the wrong place there was 
a chance of the whole herd stampeding. Each man then 
saddled and bridled his horse. This was usually followed 
by some resolute bucking on the part of two or three of the 
horses, especially in the early days of each round-up. The 
bucking was always a source of amusement to all the men 
whose horses did not buck, and these fortunate ones would 
gather round giving ironical advice, and especially adjuring 
the rider not to "go to leather" — that is, not to steady 
himself in the saddle by catching hold of the saddle-horn. 
As soon as the men had mounted, the whole outfit started 
on the long circle, the morning circle. Usually the ranch 
foreman who bossed a given wagon was put in charge of the 
men of one group by the round-up foreman ; he might keep 
his men together until they had gone some ten or fifteen 
miles from camp, and then drop them in couples at different 
points. Each couple made its way toward the wagon, 
gathering all the cattle it could find. The morning's ride 
might last six or eight hours, and it was still longer before 
some of the men got in. Singly and in twos and threes they 
appeared from every quarter of the horizon, the dust rising 
from the hoofs of the steers and bulls, the cows and calves, 
they had collected. Two or three of the men were left to 
take care of the herd while the others changed horses, ate a 
hasty dinner, and then came out to the afternoon work. 
This consisted of each man in succession being sent into the 
herd, usually with a companion, to cut out the cows of his 
brand or brands which were followed by unbranded cajves, 
and also to cut out any mavericks or unbranded yearlings. 
We worked each animal gently out to the edge of the herd, 
and then with a sudden dash took it off at a run. _ It was 
always desperately anxious to break back and rejoin the 



114 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

herd. There was much breakneck galloping and twisting 
and turning before its desire was thwarted and it was driven 
to join the rest of the cut — that is, the other animals which 
had been cut out, and which were being held by one or two 
other men. Cattle hate being alone, and it was no easy 
matter to hold the first one or two that were cut out ; but 




The Cow-puncheks. 

'The men were lean, sinewy fellows, accustomed to riding half-broken horses, at any 
speed, over any country, by day or by night." 



soon they got a little herd of their own, and then they were 
contented. When the cutting out had all been done, the 
calves were branded, and all misadventures of the "calf 
wrestlers," the men who seized, threw, and held each calf 
when roped by the mounted roper, were hailed with yelling 
laughter. Then the animals which for one reason or an- 
other it was desired to drive along with the round-up were 
put into one herd and left in charge of a couple of night 



IN COWBOY LAND 115 

guards, and the rest of us would loaf back to the wagon for 
supper and bed. 

By this time I would have been accepted as one of the 
rest of the outfit, and all strangeness would have passed off, 
the attitude of my fellow cow-punchers being one of friendly 
forgiveness even toward my spectacles. Night guards for 
the cattle herd were then assigned by the captain of the 
wagon, or perhaps by the round-up foreman, according to the 
needs of the case, the guards standing for two hours at a 
time from eight in the evening till four in the morning. The 
first and last watches were preferable, because sleep was not 
broken as in both of the other two. If things went well, the 
cattle would soon bed down and nothing further would 
occur until morning, when there was a repetition of the work, 
the wagon moving each day eight or ten miles to some ap- 
pointed camping-place. 

Each man would picket his night horse near the wagon, 
usually choosing the quietest animal in his string for that 
purpose, because to saddle and mount a "mean" horse at 
night is not pleasant. When utterly tired, it was hard to 
have to get up for one's trick at night herd. Nevertheless, 
on ordinary nights the two hours round the cattle in the still 
darkness were pleasant. The loneliness, under the vast 
empty sky, and the silence, in which the breathing of the 
cattle sounded loud, and the alert readiness to meet any 
emergency which might suddenly arise out of the formless 
night, all combined to give one a sense of subdued interest. 
Then, one soon got to know the cattle of marked indi- 
viduality, the ones that led the others into mischief; and 
one also grew to recognize the traits they all possessed in 
common, and the impulses which, for instance, made a 
whole herd get up towards midnight, each beast turning 
round and then lying down again. But by the end of the 
watch each rider had studied the cattle until it grew monot- 
onous, and heartily welcomed his relief guard. A newcomer, 
of course, had any amount to learn, and sometimes the sim- 
plest things were those which brought him to grief. 

One night early in my career I failed satisfactorily to 
identify the direction in which I was to go in order to reach 



ii6 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

the night herd. It was a pitch-dark night. I managed to 
get started wrong, and I never found either the herd or the 
wagon again until sunrise, when I was greeted with wither- 
ing scorn by the injured cow-puncher, who had been obUged 
to stand double guard because I failed to relieve him. 

There were other misadventures that I met with where 
the excuse was greater. The punchers on night guard 
usually rode round the cattle in reverse directions ; calling 
and singing to them if the beasts seemed restless, to keep 
them quiet. On rare occasions something happened that 
made the cattle stampede, and then the duty of the riders 
was to keep with them as long as possible and try gradually 
to get control of them. 

One night there was a heavy storm, and all of us who were 
at the wagons were obliged to turn out hastily to help the 
night herders. After a while there was a terrific peal of 
thunder, the lightning struck right by the herd, and away all 
the beasts went, heads and horns and tails in the air. For a 
minute or two I could make out nothing except the dark 
forms of the beasts running on every side of me, and I should 
have been very sorry if my horse had stumbled, for those 
behind would have trodden me down. Then the herd split, 
part going to one side, while the other part seemingly kept 
straight ahead, and I galloped as hard as ever beside them. 
I was trying to reach the point — the leading animals — in 
order to turn them, when suddenly there was a tremendous 
splashing in front. I could dimly make out that the cattle 
immediately ahead and to one side of me were disappearing, 
and the next moment the horse and I went off a cut bank into 
the Little Missouri. I bent away back in the saddle, and 
though the horse almost went down he just recovered himself, 
and, plunging and struggling through water and quicksand, 
we made the other side. Here I discovered that there was 
another cowboy with the same part of the herd that I 
was with ; but almost immediately we separated. I gal- 
loped hard through a bottom covered with big cottonwood 
trees, and stopped the part of the herd that I was with, but 
very soon they broke on me again, and repeated this twice. 
Finally toward morning the few I had left came to a halt. 



IN COWBOY LAND 117 

It had been raining hard for some time. I got off my 
horse and leaned against a tree, but before long the infernal 
cattle started on again, and I had to ride after them. Dawn 
came soon after this, and I was able to make out where I 
was and head the cattle back, collecting other little bunches 
as I went. After a while I came on a cowboy on foot carry- 
ing his saddle on his head. He was my companion of the 
previous night. His horse had gone full speed into a tree 
and killed itself, the man, however, not being hurt. I 
could not help him, as I had all I could do to handle the 
cattle. When I got them to the wagon, most of the other 
men had already come in and the riders were just starting on 
the long circle. One of the men changed my horse for me 
while I ate a hasty breakfast, and then we were off for the 
day's work. 

As only about half of the night herd had been brought 
back, the circle riding was particularly heavy, and it was ten 
hours before we were back at the wagon. We then changed 
horses again and worked the whole herd until after sunset, 
finishing just as it grew too dark to do anything more. By 
this time I had been nearly forty hours in the saddle, chang- 
ing horses five times, and my clothes had thoroughly dried 
on me, and I fell asleep as soon as I touched the bedding. 
Fortunately some men who had gotten in late in the morn- 
ing had had their sleep during the daytime, so that the 
rest of us escaped night guard and were not called until 
four next morning. Nobody ever gets enough sleep on a 
round-up. 

The above was the longest number of consecutive hours 
I ever had to be in the saddle. But, as I have said, I changed 
horses five times, and it is a great lightening of labor for a 
rider to have a fresh horse. Once when with Sylvane 
Ferris I spent about sixteen hours on one horse, riding 
seventy or eighty miles. The round-up had reached a 
place called the ox-bow of the Little Missouri, and we had 
to ride there, do some work around the cattle, and ride 
back. 

Another time I was twenty-four hours on horseback in 
company with Merrifield without changing horses. On this 



ii8 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

occasion we did not travel fast. We had been coming 
back with the wagon from a hunting trip in the Big Horn 
Mountains. The team was fagged out, and we were tired 
of walking at a snail's pace beside it. When we reached 
country that the driver thoroughly knew, we thought it 
safe to leave him, and we loped in one night across a distance 
which it took the wagon the three following days to cover. 
It was a beautiful moonlight night, and the ride was delight- 
ful. All day long we had plodded at a walk, weary and hot. 
At supper time we had rested two or three hours, and the 
tough little riding horses seemed as fresh as ever. It was in 
September. As we rode out of the circle of the firelight, the 
air was cool in our faces. Under the bright moonlight, and 
then under the starlight, we loped and cantered mile after 
mile over the high prairie. We passed bands of antelope and 
herds of long-horn Texas cattle, and at last, just as the first 
red beams of the sun flamed over the bluffs in front of us, 
we rode down into the valley of the Little Missouri, where 
our ranch house stood. 

I never became a good roper, nor more than an average 
rider, according to ranch standards. Of course a man on a 
ranch has to ride a good many bad horses, and is bound to 
encounter a certain number of accidents, and of these I had 
my share, at one time cracking a rib, and on another occa- 
sion the point of my shoulder. We were hundreds of miles 
from a doctor, and each time, as I was on the round-up, I 
had to get through my work for the next few weeks as best I 
could, until the injury healed of itself. When I had the 
opportunity I broke my own horses, doing it gently and 
gradually and spending much time over it, and choosing the 
horses that seemed gentle to begin with. With these horses 
I never had any difficulty. But frequently there was neither 
time nor opportunity to handle our mounts so elaborately. 
We might get a band of horses, each having been bridled and 
saddled two or three times, but none of them having been 
broken beyond the extent implied in this bridling and 
saddling. Then each of us in succession would choose a 
horse (for his string), I as owner of the ranch being given the 
first choice on each round, so to speak. The first time I was 



IN COWBOY LAND 119 

ever on a round-up Sylvane Ferris, Merrifield, Meyer, and 
I each chose his string in this fashion. Three or four of the 
animals I got were not easy to ride. The effort both to ride 
them and to look as if I enjoyed doing so, on some cool 
morning when my grinning cowboy friends had gathered 
round "to see whether the high-headed bay could buck the 
boss oflF," doubtless was of benefit to me, but lacked much of 
being enjoyable. The time I smashed my rib I was bucked 
off on a stone. The time I hurt the point of my shoulder 
I was riding a big, sulky horse named Ben Butler, which went 
over backwards with me. When we got up it still refused to 
go anywhere; so, while I sat it, Sylvane Ferris and George 
Meyer got their ropes on its neck and dragged it a few hun- 
dred yards, choking but stubborn, all four feet firmly planted 
and plowing the ground. When they released the ropes it 
lay down and wouldn't get up. The round-up had started ; 
so Sylvane gave me his horse, Baldy, which sometimes 
bucked but never went over backwards, and he got on the 
now rearisen Ben Butler. To my discomfiture Ben started 
quietly beside us, while Sylvane remarked, "Why, there's 
nothing the matter with this horse ; he's a plumb gentle 
horse." Then Ben fell slightly behind and I heard Sylvane 
again, "That's all right ! Come along ! Here, you ! Go 
on, you ! Hi, hi, fellows, help me out ! he's lying on me !" 
Sure enough, he was ; and when we dragged Sylvane from 
under him the first thing the rescued Sylvane did was to 
execute a war-dance, spurs and all, on the iniquitous Ben. 
We could do nothing with him that day ; subsequently we 
got him so that we could ride him ; but he never became a 
nice saddle-horse. 

As with all other forms of work, so on the round-up, a 
man of ordinary power, who nevertheless does not shirk 
things merely because they are disagreeable or irksome, 
soon earns his place. There were crack riders and ropers 
who, just because they felt such overweening pride in their 
own prowess, were not really very valuable men. Contin- 
ually on the circles a cow or a calf would get into some thick 
patch of bulberry bush and refuse to come out; or when it 
was getting late we would pass some bad lands that would 



I20 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

probably not contain cattle, but might; or a steer would 
turn fighting mad, or a calf grow tired and want to lie down. 
If in such a case the man steadily persists in doing the un- 
attractive thing, and after two hours of exasperation and 
harassment does finally get the cow out, and keep her out, 
of the bulberry bushes, and drives her to the wagon, or 
finds some animals that have been passed by in the fourth 
or fifth patch of bad lands he hunts through, or gets the calf 
up on his saddle and takes it in anyhow, the foreman soon 
grows to treat him as having his uses and as being an asset 
of worth in the round-up, even though neither a fancy roper 
nor a fancy rider. 

When at the Progressive Convention last August, I met 
George Meyer for the first time in many years, and he recalled 
to me an incident on one round-up where we happened to 
be thrown together while driving some cows and calves to 
camp. When the camp was only just across the river, two 
of the calves positively refused to go any further. He took 
one of them in his arms, and after some hazardous maneuver- 
ing managed to get on his horse, in spite of the objections 
of the latter, and rode into the river. My calf was too big 
for such treatment, so in despair I roped it, intending to 
drag it over. However, as soon as I roped it, the calf started 
bouncing and bleating, and, owing to some lack of dexterity 
on my part, suddenly swung round the rear of the horse, 
bringing the rope under his tail, Down went the tail 
tight, and the horse "went into figures," as the cow-puncher 
phrase of that day was. There was a cut bank about four 
feet high on the hither side of the river, and over this the 
horse bucked. We went into the water with a splash. With 
a "pluck" the calf followed, described a parabola in the air, 
and landed beside us. Fortunately, this took the rope out 
from under the horse's tail, but left him thoroughly 
frightened. He could not do much bucking in the stream, 
for there were one or two places where we had to swim, and 
the shallows were either sandy or muddy; but across we 
went, at speed, and the calf made a wake like Pharaoh's 
army in the Red Sea. 

On several occasions we had to fight fire. In the geog- 



IN COWBOY LAND 



121 



raphy books of my youth prairie fires were always por- 
trayed as taking place in long grass, and all living things 
ran before them. On the Northern cattle plains the grass 
was never long enough to be a source of danger to man or 
beast. The fires were nothing like the forest fires in the 
Northern woods. But they destroyed large quantities of 




On the Long Circle. 



feed, and we had to stop them where possible. The process 
we usually followed was to kill a steer, split it in two length- 
wise, and then have two riders drag each half-steer, the 
rope of one running from his saddle-horn to the front leg, 
and that of the other to the hind leg. One of the men would 
spur this horse over or through the line of fire, and the 
two would then ride forward, dragging the steer bloody side 
downward along the line of flame, men following on foot 
with slickers or wet horse-blankets to beat out any flickering 
blaze that was still left. It was exciting work, for the fire 



122 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

and the twitching and plucking of the ox carcass over the 
uneven ground maddened the fierce Httle horses so that it 
was necessary to do some riding in order to keep them to 
their work. After a while it also became very exhausting, 
the thirst and fatigue being great, as, with parched lips and 
blackened from head to foot, we toiled at our task. 

In those years the Stockman's Association of Montana 
was a powerful body. I was the delegate to it from the Little 
Missouri. The meetings that I attended were held in 
Miles City, at that time a typical cow town. Stockmen of 
all kinds attended, including the biggest men in the stock 
business, men like old Conrad Kohrs, who was and is the 
finest type of pioneer in all the Rocky Mountain country ; 
and Granville Stewart, who was afterwards appointed 
Minister by Cleveland, I think to the Argentine ; and 
"Hashknife" Simpson, a Texan who had brought his cattle, 
the Hashknife brand, up the trail into our country. He and 
I grew to be great friends. I can see him now the first time 
we met, grinning at me as, none too comfortable, I sat a 
half-broken horse at the edge of a cattle herd we were work- 
ing. His son Sloan Simpson went to Harvard, was one of 
the first-class men in my regiment, and afterwards held 
my commission as Postmaster at Dallas. 

At the stockmen's meeting in Miles City, in addition to 
the big stockmen, there were always hundreds of cowboys 
galloping up and down the wide dusty streets at every hour 
of the day and night. It was a picturesque sight during the 
three days the meetings lasted. There was always at least 
one big dance at the hotel. There were few dress suits, but 
there was perfect decorum at the dance, and in the square 
dances most of the men knew the figures far better than I 
did. With such a crowd in town, sleeping accommodations 
of any sort were at a premium, and in the hotel there were 
two men in every bed. On one occasion I had a roommate 
whom I never saw, because he always went to bed much 
later than I did and I always got up much earlier than he 
did. On the last day, however, he rose at the same time 
and I saw that he was a man I knew named Carter, and 
nicknamed "Modesty" Carter. He was a stalwart, good- 



IN COWBOY LAND 123 

looking fellow, and I was sorry when later I heard that he 
had been killed in a shooting row. 

When I went West, the last great Indian wars had just 
come to an end, but there were still sporadic outbreaks 
here and there, and occasionally bands of marauding young 
braves were a menace to outlying and lonely settlements. 
Many of the white men were themselves lawless and brutal, 
and prone to commit outrages on the Indians. Un- 
fortunately, each race tended to hold all the members of the 
other race responsible for the misdeeds of a few, so that the 
crime of the miscreant, red or white, who committed the 
original outrage too often invited retaliation upon entirely 
innocent people, and this action would in its turn arouse 
bitter feeling which found vent in still more indiscriminate 
retaliation. The first year I was on the Little Missouri 
some Sioux bucks ran off all the horses of a buffalo-hunter's 
outfit. One of the buffalo-hunters tried to get even by 
stealing the horses of a Cheyenne hunting party, and when 
pursued made for a cow camp, with, as a result, a long- 
range skirmish between the cowboys and the Cheyennes. 
One of the latter was wounded ; but this particular wounded 
man seemed to have more sense than the other participants 
in the chain of wrong-doing, and discriminated among the 
whites. He came into our camp and had his wound dressed. 

A year later I was at a desolate little mud road ranch on 
the Deadwood trail. It was kept by a very capable and 
very forceful woman, with sound ideas of justice and abun- 
dantly well able to hold her own. Her husband was a worth- 
less devil, who finally got drunk on some whisky he obtained 
from an outfit of Missouri bull-whackers — that is, freighters, 
driving ox wagons. Under the stimulus of the whisky he 
picked a quarrel with his wife and attempted to beat her. 
She knocked him down with a stove-lid lifter, and the ad- 
miring bull whackers bore him off, leaving the lady in full 
possession of the ranch. When I visited her she had a man 
named Crow Joe working for her, a slab-sided, shifty-eyed 
person who later, as I heard my foreman explain, "skipped 
the country with a bunch of horses." The mistress of the 
ranch made first-class buckskin shirts of great durability. 



124 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

The one she made for me, and which I used for years, 
was used by one of my sons in Arizona a couple of winters 
ago. I had ridden down into the country after some lost 
horses, and visited the ranch to get her to make me the buck- 
skin shirt in question. There were, at the moment, three 
Indians there, Sioux, well behaved and self-respecting, and 
she explained to me that they had been resting there waiting 
for dinner, and that a white man had come along and tried 
to run off their horses. The Indians were on the lookout, 
however, and, running out, they caught the man ; but, after 
retaking their horses and depriving him of his gun, they let 
him go. "I don't see why they let him go," exclaimed my 
hostess. "I don't believe in stealing Indians' horses any 
more than white folks' ; so I told 'em they could go along and 
hang him — I'd never cheep. Anyhow, I won't charge 
them anything for their dinner," concluded my hostess. 
She was in advance of the usual morality of the time and 
place, which drew a sharp line between stealing citizens' 
horses and stealing horses from the Government or the 
Indians. 

A fairly decent citizen, Jap Hunt, who long ago met a 
violent death, exemplified this attitude towards Indians in 
some remarks I once heard him make. He had started a 
horse ranch, and had quite honestly purchased a number of 
broken-down horses of different brands, with the view of 
doctoring them and selling them again. About this time 
there had been much horse-stealing and cattle-killing in our 
Territory and in Montana, and under the direction of some 
of the big cattle-growers a committee of vigilantes had been 
organized to take action against the rustlers, as the horse 
thieves and cattle thieves were called. The vigilantes, or 
stranglers, as they were locally known, did their work thor- 
oughly ; but, as always happens with bodies of the kind, 
toward the end they grew reckless in their actions, paid off 
private grudges, and hung men on slight provocation. 
Riding into Jap Hunt's ranch, they nearly hung him be- 
cause he had so many horses of different brands. He was 
finally let off. He was much upset by the incident, and 
explained again and again, "The idea of saying that I 



IN COWBOY LAND 125 

was a horse thief ! Why, I never stole a horse in my Hfe 
— leastways from a white man. I don't count Indians nor 
the Government, of course." Jap had been reared among 
men still in the stage of tribal morality, and while they rec- 
ognized their obligations to one another, both the Govern- 
ment and the Indians seemed alien bodies, in regard to which 
the laws of morality did not apply. 

On the other hand, parties of savage young bucks would 
treat lonely settlers just as badly, and in addition sometimes 
murder them. Such a party was generally composed of 
young fellows burning to distinguish themselves. Some 
one of their number would have obtained a pass from the 
Indian Agent allowing him to travel off the reservation, 
which pass would be flourished whenever their action was 
questioned by bodies of whites of equal strength. I once 
had a trifling encounter with such a band. I was making 
my way along" the edge of the bad lands, northward from 
my lower ranch, and was just crossing a plateau when five 
Indians rode up over the further rim. The instant they saw 
me they whipped out their guns and raced full speed at me, 
yelling and flogging their horses. I was on a favorite horse, 
Manitou, who was a wise old fellow, with nerves not to be 
shaken by anything. I at once leaped off him and stood 
with my rifle ready. 

It was possible that the Indians were merely making a 
bluff and intended no mischief. But I did not like their 
actions, and I thought it likely that if I allowed them to 
get hold of me they would at least take my horse and rifle, 
and possibly kill me. So I waited until they were a hundred 
yards off and then drew a bead on the first. Indians — and, 
for the matter of that, white men — do not like to ride in on 
a man who is cool and means shooting, and in a twinkling 
every man was lying over the side of his horse, and all five 
had turned and were galloping backwards, having altered 
their course as quickly as so many teal ducks. 

After this one of them made the peace sign, with his 
blanket first, and then, as he rode toward me, with his open 
hand. I halted him at a fair distance and asked him what 
he wanted. He exclaimed, "How! Me good Injun, me 



126 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

good Injun," and tried to show me the dirty piece of paper 
on which his agency pass was written. I told him with 
sincerity that I was glad that he was a good Indian, but 
that he must not come any closer. He then asked for sugar 
and tobacco. I told him I had none. Another Indian began 
slowly drifting toward me in spite of my calling out to keep 
back, so I once more aimed with my rifle, whereupon both 
Indians slipped to the other side of their horses and galloped 
off, with oaths that did credit to at least one side of their 
acquaintance with English. I now mounted and pushed 
over the plateau on to the open prairie. In those days an 
Indian, although not as good a shot as a white man, was 
infinitely better at crawling under and taking advantage of 
cover ; and the worst thing a white man could do was to get 
into cover, whereas out in the open if he kept his head he had 
a good chance of standing off even half a dozen assailants. 
The Indians accompanied me for a couple of miles. Then 
I reached the open prairie, and resumed my northward 
ride, not being further molested. 

In the old days in the ranch country we depended upon 
game for fresh meat. Nobody liked to kill a beef, and al- 
though now and then a maverick yearling might be killed 
on the round-up, most of us looked askance at the deed, 
because if the practice of beef-killing was ever allowed to 
start, the rustlers — the horse thieves and cattle thieves — 
would be sure to seize on it as an excuse for general slaughter. 
Getting meat for the ranch usually devolved upon me. I 
almost always carried a rifle when I rode, either in a scab- 
bard under my thigh, or across the pommel. Often I would 
pick up a deer or antelope while about my regular work, 
when visiting a line camp or riding after the cattle. At 
other times I would make a day's trip after them. In the 
fall we sometimes took a wagon and made a week's hunt, 
returning with eight or ten deer carcasses, and perhaps an 
elk or a mountain sheep as well. I never became more than 
a fair hunter, and at times I had most exasperating experi- 
ences, either failing to see game which I ought to have seen, 
or committing some blunder in the stalk, or failing to kill 
when I fired. Looking back, I am inclined to say that if I 



IN COWBOY LAND 127 

had any good quality as a hunter it was that of perseverance. 
"It is dogged that does it" in hunting as in many other 
things. Unless in wholly exceptional cases, when we were 
very hungry, I never killed anything but bucks. 

Occasionally I made long trips away from the ranch and 
among the Rocky Mountains with my ranch foreman Merri- 
iield ; or in later years with Tazewell Woody, John Willis, 
or John Goff. We hunted bears, both the black and the 
grizzly, cougars and wolves, and moose, wapiti, and white 
goat. On one of these trips I killed a bison bull, and I also 
killed a bison bull on the Little Missouri some fifty miles 
south of my ranch on a trip which Joe Ferris and I took 
together. It was rather a rough trip. Each of us carried 
only his slicker behind him on the saddle, with some flour 
and bacon done up in it. We met with all kinds of mis- 
adventures. Finally one night, when we were sleeping by 
a slimy little prairie pool where there was not a stick of wood, 
we had to tie the horses to the horns of our saddles ; and 
then we went to sleep with our heads on the saddles. In 
the middle of the night something stampeded the horses, 
and away they went, with the saddles after them. As we 
jumped to our feet Joe eyed me with an evident suspicion 
that I was the Jonah of the party, and said : "O Lord ! Pve 
never done anything to deserve this. Did you ever do any- 
thing to deserve this V 

In addition to my private duties, I sometimes served as 
deputy sherifi" for the northern end of our county. The 
sheriff and I crisscrossed in our public and private relations. 
He often worked for me as a hired hand at the same time 
that I was his deputy. His name, or at least the name he 
went by, was Bill Jones, and as there were in the neighbor- 
hood several Bill Joneses — Three Seven Bill Jones, Texas 
Bill Jones, and the like — the sheriff was known as Hell 
Roaring Bill Jones. He was a thorough frontiersman, 
excellent in all kinds of emergencies, and a very game man. 
I became much attached to him. He was a thoroughly 
good citizen when sober, but he was a little wild when drunk. 
Unfortunately, toward the end of his life he got to drinking 
very heavily. When, in 1905, John Burroughs and I visited 



128 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

the Yellowstone Park, poor Bill Jones, very much down in 
the world, was driving a team in Gardiner outside the park. 
I had looked forward to seeing him, and he was equally 
anxious to see me. He kept telling his cronies of our in- 
timacy and of what we were going to do together, and then 
got drinking; and the result was that by the time I reached 
Gardiner he had to be carried out and left in the sage-brush. 




SlIKKU'F Dl:1Y. 

'When I served as deputy sheriff for the northern end of our county; 



When I came out of the park, I sent on in advance to tell 
them to be sure to keep him sober, and they did so. But it 
was a rather sad interview. The old fellow had gone to 
pieces, and soon after I left he got lost in a blizzard and was 
dead when they found him. 

Bill Jones was a gun-fighter and also a good man with his 
fists. On one occasion there was an election in town. There 
had been many threats that the party of disorder would 
import section hands from the neighboring railway stations 



IN COWBOY LAND 129 

to down our side. I did not reach Medora, tlie forlorn little 
cattle town which was our county seat, until the election was 
well under way. I then asked one of my friends if there 
had been any disorder. Bill Jones was standing by. "Dis- 
order hell !" said my friend. "Bill Jones just stood there 
with one hand on his gun and the other pointing over toward 
the new jail whenever any man who didn't have a right to 
vote came near the polls. There was only one of them tried 
to vote, and Bill knocked him down. Lord !" added my 
friend, meditatively, "the way that man fell!" "Well," 
struck in Bill Jones, "if he hadn't fell I'd have walked round 
behind him to see what was propping him up !" 

In the days when I lived on the ranch I usually spent most 
of the winter in the East, and when I returned in the early 
spring I was always interested in finding out what had hap- 
pened since my departure. On one occasion I was met by 
Bill Jones and Sylvane Ferris, and in the course of our con- 
versation they mentioned "the lunatic." This led to a 
question on my part, and Sylvane Ferris began the story : 
"Well, you see, he was on a train and he shot the newsboy. 
At first they weren't going to do anything to him, for they 
thought he just had it in for the newsboy. But then some- 
body said, 'Why, he's plumb crazy, and he's liable to shoot 
any of us !'' and then they threw him off the train. It was 
here at Medora, and they asked if anybody would take care 
of him, and Bill Jones said he would, because he was the 
sheriff and the jail had two rooms, and he was living in one 
and would put the lunatic in the other." Here Bill Jones 
interrupted: "Yes, and more fool me! I wouldn't take 
charge of another lunatic if the whole county asked me. 
Why" (with the air of a man announcing an astounding 
discovery), "that lunatic didn't have his right senses ! He 
wouldn't eat, till me and Snyder got him down on the shav- 
ings and made him eat." Snyder was a huge, happy-go- 
lucky, kind-hearted Pennsylvania Dutchman, and was Bill 
Jones's chief deputy. Bill continued : "You know, Snyder's 
soft-hearted, he is. Well, he'd think that lunatic looked 
peaked, and he'd take him out for an airing. Then the boys 
would get joshing him as to how much start he could give 



I30 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

him over the prairie and catch him again." Apparently 
the amount of the start given the lunatic depended upon the 
amount of the bet to which the joshing led up. I asked Bill 
what he would have done if Snyder hadn't caught the 
lunatic. This was evidently a new idea, and he responded 
that Snyder always did catch him. "Well, but suppose 
he hadn't caught him.?" "Well," said Bill Jones, "if 
Snyder hadn't caught the lunatic, I'd have whaled hell out of 
Snyder!" 

Under these circumstances Snyder ran his best and al- 
ways did catch the patient. It must not be gathered from 
this that the lunatic was badly treated. He was well 
treated. He became greatly attached to both Bill Jones 
and Snyder, and he objected strongly when, after the frontier 
theory of treatment of the insane had received a full trial, 
he was finally sent off to the territorial capital. It was 
merely that all the relations of life in that place and day were 
so managed as to give ample opportunity for the expression 
of individuality, whether in sheriff or ranchman. The 
local practical joker once attempted to have some fun at 
the expense of the lunatic, and Bill Jones described the result. 
"You know Bixby, don't you ! Well," with deep dis- 
approval, "Bixby thinks he is funny, he does. He'd come 
and he'd wake that lunatic up at night, and I'd have to get 
up and soothe him. I fixed Bixby all right, though. I 
fastened a rope on the latch, and next time Bixby came I let 
the lunatic out on him. He 'most bit Bixby's nose off. I 
learned Bixby ! " 

Bill Jones had been unconventional in other relations 
besides that of sheriff. He once casually mentioned to me 
that he had served on the police force of Bismarck, but he 
had left because he "beat the Mayor over the head with his 
gun one day." He added : "The Mayor, he didn't mind it, 
but the Superintendent of Police said he guessed I'd better 
resign." His feeling, obviously, was that the Superintendent 
of Police was a martinet, unfit to take large views of life. 

It was while with Bill Jones that I first made acquaintance 
with Seth Bullock. Seth was at that time sheriff in the 
Black Hills district, and a man he had wanted — a horse 



IN COWBOY LAND 131 

thief — I finally got, I being at the time deputy sheriff two 
or three hundred miles to the north. The man went by a 
nickname which I will call "Crazy Steve"; a year or two 
afterwards I received a letter asking about him from his 
uncle, a thoroughly respectable man in a Western State ; 
and later this uncle and I met at Washington when I was 
President and he a United States Senator. It was some 
time after "Steve's" capture that I went down to Dead- 
wood on business, Sylvane Ferris and I on horseback, while 
Bill Jones drove the wagon. At a little town, Spearfish, 
I think, after crossing the last eighty or ninety miles of 
gumbo prairie, we met Seth Bullock. We had had rather a 
rough trip, and had lain out for a fortnight, so I suppose we 
looked somewhat unkempt. Seth received us with rather 
distant courtesy at first, but unbent when he found out who 
we were, remarking, "You see, by your looks I thought you 
were some kind of a tin-horn gambling outfit, and that I 
might have to keep an eye on you !" He then inquired 
after the capture of "Steve" — with a little of the air of one 
sportsman when another has shot a quail that either might 
have claimed — "My bird, I believe.^" Later Seth Bul- 
lock became, and has ever since remained, one of my stanch- 
est and most valued friends. He served as Marshal for 
South Dakota under me as President. When, after the 
close of my term, I went to Africa, on getting back to Europe 
I cabled Seth Bullock to bring over Mrs. Bullock and meet 
me in London, which he did ; by that time I felt that I just 
had to meet my own people, who spoke my neighborhood 
dialect. 

When serving as deputy sheriff I was impressed with the 
advantage the officer of the law has over ordinary wrong- 
doers, provided he thoroughly knows his own mind. There 
are exceptional outlaws, men with a price on their heads 
and of remarkable prowess, who are utterly indifferent to 
taking life, and whose warfare against society is as open as 
that of a savage on the war-path. The law officer has no 
advantage whatever over these men save what his own 
prowess may — or may not — give him. Such a man was 
Billy the Kid, the notorious man-killer and desperado of 



132 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

New Mexico, who was himself finally slain by a friend of 
mine, Pat Garrett, whom, when I was President, I made 
collector of customs at El Paso. But the ordinary criminal, 
even when murderously inclined, feels just a moment's 
hesitation as to whether he cares to kill an officer of the law 
engaged in his duty. I took in more than one man who was 
probably a better man than I was with both rifle and re- 
volver; but in each case I knew just what I wanted to do, 
and, like David Harum, I "did it first," whereas the frac- 
tion of a second that the other man hesitated put him in a 
position where it was useless for him to resist. 

I owe more than I can ever express to the West, which of 
course means to the men and women I met in the West. 
There were a few people of bad type in my neighborhood — 
that would be true of every group of men, even in a theo- 
logical seminary — but I could not speak with too great affec- 
tion and respect of the great majority of my friends, the hard- 
working men and women who dwelt for a space of perhaps 
a hundred and fifty miles along the Little Missouri. I was 
always as welcome at their houses as they were at mine. 
Everybody worked, everybody was willing to help every- 
body else, and yet nobody asked any favors. The same 
thing was true of the people whom I got to know fifty miles 
east and fifty miles west of my own range, and of the men 
I met on the round-ups. They soon accepted me as a 
friend and fellow-worker who stood on an equal footing with 
them, and I believe that most of them have kept their feel- 
ing for me ever since. No guests were ever more welcome 
at the White House than these old friends of the cattle 
ranches and the cow camps — the men with whom I had 
ridden the long circle and eaten at the tail-board of a chuck- 
wagon — whenever they turned up at Washington during 
my Presidency. I remember one of them who appeared at 
Washington one day just before lunch, a huge, powerful 
man who, when I knew him, had been distinctly a fighting 
character. It happened that on that day another old friend, 
the British Ambassador, Mr. Bryce, was among those 
coming to lunch. Just before we went in I turned to my 
cow-puncher friend and said to him with great solemnity, 



IN COWBOY LAND 133 

"Remember, Jim, that if you shot at the feet of the British 
Ambassador to make him dance, it would be likely to cause 
international complications"; to which Jim responded with 
unaffected horror, "Why, Colonel, I shouldn't think of it, 
I shouldn't think of it !" 

Not only did the men and women whom I met in the cow 
country quite unconsciously help me, by the insight which 
working and living with them enabled me to get into the 
mind and soul of the average American of the right type, 
but they helped me in another way. I made up my mind 
that the men were of just the kind whom it would be well 
to have with me if ever it became necessary to go to war. 
When the Spanish War came, I gave this thought practical 
realization. 

Fortunately, Wister and Remington, with pen and pencil, 
have made these men live as long as our literature lives. I 
have sometimes been asked if Wister's "Mrginian" is not 
overdrawn ; why, one of the men I have mentioned in this 
chapter was in all essentials the Virginian in real life, not 
only in his force but in his charm. Half of the men I worked 
with or played with and half of the men who soldiered with 
me afterwards in my regiment might have walked out of 
Wister's stories or Remington's pictures. 

There were bad characters in the Western country at that 
time, of course, and under the conditions of life they were 
probably more dangerous than they would have been else- 
where. I hardly ever had any difficulty, however. I never 
went into a saloon, and in the little hotels I kept out of the 
bar-room unless, as sometimes happened, the bar-room was 
the only room on the lower floor except the dining-room. I 
always endeavored to keep out of a quarrel until self-respect 
forbade my making any further effort to avoid it, and I very 
rarely had even the semblance of trouble. 

Of course amusing incidents occurred now and then. 
Usually these took place when I was hunting lost horses, 
for in hunting lost horses I was ordinarily alone, and occasion- 
ally had to travel a hundred or a hundred and fifty miles 
away from my own country. On one such occasion I reached 
a little cow town long after dark, stabled my horse in an 



134 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

empty outbuilding, and when I readied the hotel was in- 
formed in response to my request for a bed that I could have 
the last one left, as there was only one other man in it. The 
room to which I was shown contained two double beds ; 




"Seth Bullock became, and has ever since remained, one of my 
stanchest and most valued friends." 

one contained two men fast asleep, and the other only one 
man, also asleep. This man proved to be a friend, one of 
the Bill Joneses whom I have previously mentioned. I 
undressed according to the fashion of the day and place, that 
is, I put my trousers, boots, shaps, and gun down beside the 



\ 



IN COWBOY LAND 135 

bed, and turned in. A couple of hours later I was awakened 
by the door being thrown open and a lantern flashed in my 
face, the light gleaming on the muzzle of a cocked .45. 
Another man said to the lantern-bearer. "It ain't him"; 
the next moment my bedfellow was covered with two guns, 
and addressed, "Now, Bill, don't make a fuss, but come 
along quiet." "I'm not thinking of making a fuss," said 
Bill. "That's right," was the answer ; "we're your friends ; 
we don't want to hurt you ; we just want you to come along, 
you know why." And Bill pulled on his trousers and boots 
and walked out with them. Up to this time there had not 
been a sound from the other bed. Now a match was 
scratched, a candle lit, and one of the men in the other bed 
looked round the room. At this point I committed the 
breach of etiquette of asking questions. "I wonder why 
they took Bill," I said. There was no answer, and I re- 
peated, "I wonder why they took Bill." "Well," said the 
man with the candle, dryly, "I reckon they wanted him," 
and with that he blew out the candle and conversation 
ceased. Later I discovered that Bill in a fit of playfulness 
had held up the Northern Pacific train at a near-by station 
by shooting at the feet of the conductor to make him dance. 
This was purely a joke on Bill's part, but the Northern 
Pacific people possessed a less robust sense of humor, and 
on their complaint the United States Marshal was sent after 
Bill, on the ground that by delaying the train he had inter- 
fered with the mails. 

The only time I ever had serious trouble was at an even 
more primitive little hotel than the one in question. It was 
also on an occasion when I was out after lost horses. Below 
the hotel had merely a bar-room, a dining-room, and a lean- 
to kitchen ; above was a loft with fifteen or twenty beds in it. 
It was late in the evening when I reached the place. I heard 
one or two shots in the bar-room as I came up, and I dis- 
liked going in. But there was nowhere else to go, and it was 
a cold night. Inside the room were several men, who, in- 
cluding the bartender, were wearing the kind of smile worn 
by men who are making believe to like what they don't like. 
A shabby individual in a broad hat with a cocked gun in 



136 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

each hand was walking up and down the floor talking with 
strident profanity. He had evidently been shooting at the 
clock, which had two or three holes in its face. 

He was not a "bad man" of the really dangerous type, the 
true man-killer type, but he was an objectionable creature, 
a would-be bad man, a bully who for the moment was 
having things all his own way. As soon as he saw me he 
hailed me as "Four eyes," in reference to my spectacles, 
and said, "Four eyes is going to treat." I joined in the 
laugh and got behind the stove and sat down, thinking to 
escape notice. He followed me, however, and though I 
tried to pass it off as a jest this merely made him more offen- 
sive, and he stood leaning over me, a gun in each hand, using 
very foul language. He was foolish to stand so near, and, 
moreover, his heels were close together, so that his position 
was unstable. Accordingly, in response to his reiterated 
command that I should set up the drinks, I said, "Well, 
if I've got to, I've got to," and rose, looking past him. 

As I rose, I struck quick and hard with my right just to 
one side of the point of his jaw, hitting with my left as I 
straightened out, and then again with my right. He fired 
the guns, but I do not know whether this was merely a 
convulsive action of his hands or whether he was trying to 
shoot at me. When he went down he struck the corner of 
the bar with his head. It was not a case in which one could 
afford to take chances, and if he had moved I was about to 
drop on his ribs with my knees ; but he was senseless. I 
took away his guns, and the other people in the room, who 
were now loud in their denunciation of him, hustled him out 
and put him in a shed. I got dinner as soon as possible, 
sitting in a corner of the dining-room away from the win- 
dows, and then went upstairs to bed where it was dark so 
that there would be no chance of any one shooting at me 
from the outside. However, nothing happened. When 
my assailant came to, he went down to the station and left 
on a freight. 

As I have said, most of the men of my regiment were just 
such men as those I knew in the ranch country ; indeed, 
some of my ranch friends were in the regiment — Fred 



IN COWBOY LAND 137 

Herrig, the forest ranger, for instance, in whose company I 
shot my biggest mountain ram. After the regiment was 
disbanded the careers of certain of the men were diversified 
by odd incidents. Our relations were of the friendliest, 
and, as they explained, they felt "as if I was a father" to 
them. The manifestations of this feeling were sometimes 
less attractive than the phrase sounded, as it was chiefly 
used by the few who were behaving like very bad children 
indeed. The great majority of the men when the regiment 
disbanded took up the business of their lives where they had 
dropped it a few months previously, and these men merely 
tried to help me or help one another as the occasion arose ; 
no man ever had more cause to be proud of his regiment 
than I had of mine, both in war and in peace. But there 
was a minority among them who in certain ways were un- 
suited for a life of peaceful regularity, although often enough 
they had been first-class soldiers. 

It was from these men that letters came with a stereotyped 
opening which always caused my heart to sink — "Dear 
Colonel : I write you because I am in trouble." The 
trouble might take almost any form. One correspondent 
continued : "I did not take the horse, but they say I did." 
Another complained that his mother-in-law had put him in 
jail for bigamy. In the case of another the incident was 
more markworthy. I will call him Gritto. He wrote me a 
letter beginning : "Dear Colonel : I write you because I am 
in trouble. I have shot a lady in the eye. But, Colonel, 
I was not shooting at the lady. I was shooting at my wife," 
which he apparently regarded as a sufficient excuse as 
between men of the world. I answered that I drew the line 
at shooting at ladies, and did not hear any more of the in- 
cident for several years. 

Then, while I was President, a member of the regiment. 
Major Llewellyn, who was Federal District Attorney under 
me in New Mexico, wrote me a letter filled, as his letters 
usually were, with bits of interesting gossip about the com- 
rades. It ran in part as follows: "Since I last wrote you 
Comrade Ritchie has killed a man in Colorado. I under- 
stand that the comrade was playing a poker game, and the 



138 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

man sat into the game and used such language that Comrade 
Ritchie had to shoot. Comrade Webb has killed two men 
in Beaver, Arizona. Comrade Webb is in the Forest Serv- 
ice, and the killing was in the line of professional duty. I 
was out at the penitentiary the other day and saw Comrade 
Gritto, who, you may remember, was put there for shooting 
his sister-in-law [this was the first information I had had as 
to the identity of the lady who was shot in the eye]. Since 
he was in there Comrade Boyne has run off to old Mexico 
with his (Gritto's) wife, and the people of Grant County 
think he ought to be let out." Evidently the sporting in- 
stincts of the people of Grant County had been roused, and 
they felt that, as Comrade Boyne had had a fair start, the 
other comrade should be let out in order to see what would 
happen. 

The men of the regiment always enthusiastically helped 
me when I was running for office. On one occasion Buck 
Taylor, of Texas, accompanied me on a trip and made a 
speech for me. The crowd took to his speech from the 
beginning and so did I, until the peroration, which ran as 
follows : "My fellow-citizens, vote for my Colonel ! vote for 
my Colonel ! and he will lead you^ as he led us, like sheep to the 
slaughter!'''' This hardly seemed a tribute to my military 
skill ; but it delighted the crowd, and as far as I could tell 
did me nothing but good. 

On another tour, when I was running for Vice-President, 
a member of the regiment who was along on the train got into 
a discussion with a Populist editor who had expressed an 
unfavorable estimate of my character, and in the course of 
the discussion shot the editor — not fatally. We had to 
leave him to be tried, and as he had no money I left him 
^150 to hire counsel — having borrowed the money from 
Senator Wolcott, of Colorado, who was also with me. After 
election I received from my friend a letter running: "Dear 
Colonel : I find I will not have to use that ^150 you lent me, 
as we have elected our candidate for District Attorney. 
So I have used it to settle a horse transaction in which I 
unfortunately became involved." A few weeks later, 
however, I received a heartbroken letter setting forth the 




Copyright, by Mrs. Frederic Remington. 

The Broncho Buster, by Frederic Remington. 

Presented to Colonel Roosevelt on September 15, 1898, by his regiment at Camp Wikoff, 
Montauk Point, where the Rough Riders were disbanded at tlie close of the Spanish- 
American War. 



I40 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

fact that the District Attorney — whom he evidently felt to 
be a cold-blooded formalist — had put him in jail. Then 
the affair dropped out of sight until two or three years later, 
when as President I visited a town in another State, and the 
leaders of the delegation which received me included both 
my correspondent and the editor, now fast friends, and both 
of them ardent supporters of mine. 

At one of the regimental reunions a man, who had been an 
excellent soldier, in greeting me mentioned how glad he was 
that the judge had let him out in time to get to the reunion. 
I asked what was the matter, and he replied with some sur- 
prise : "Why, Colonel, don't you know I had a difficulty with 
a gentleman, and . . . er . . . well, I killed the gentle- 
man. But you can see that the judge thought it was all 
right or he wouldn't have let me go." Waiving the latter 
point, I said : "How did it happen ? How did you do it .?" 
Misinterpreting my question as showing an interest only in 
the technique of the performance, the ex-puncher replied : 
"With a .38 on a .45 frame. Colonel." I chuckled over the 
answer, and it became proverbial with my family and some 
of my friends, including Seth Bullock. When I was shot at 
Milwaukee, Seth Bullock wired an inquiry to which I re- 
sponded that it was all right, that the weapon was merely 
"a .38 on a .45 frame." The telegram in some way became 
public, and puzzled outsiders. By the way, both the men 
of my regiment and the friends I had made in the old days in 
the West were themselves a little puzzled at the interest 
shown in my making my speech after being shot. This was 
what they expected, what they accepted as the right thing 
for a man to do under the circumstances, a thing the non- 
performance of which would have been discreditable rather 
than the performance being creditable. They would not 
have expected a man to leave a battle, for instance, because 
of being wounded in such fashion ; and they saw no reason 
why he should abandon a less important and less risky 
duty. 

One of the best soldiers of my regiment was a huge 
man whom I made marshal of a Rocky Mountain State. 
He had spent his hot and lusty youth on the frontier during 



IN COWBOY LAND 141 

its viking age, and at that time had naturally taken part in 
incidents which seemed queer to men "accustomed to die 
decently of zymotic diseases." I told him that an effort 
would doubtless be made to prevent his confirmation by the 
Senate, and therefore that I wanted to know all the facts in 
his case. Had he played faro ? He had ; but it was when 
everybody played faro, and he had never played a brace 
game. Had he killed anybody f Yes, but it was in Dodge 
City on occasions when he was deputy marshal or town mar- 
shal, at a time when Dodge City, now the most peaceful of 
communities, was the toughest town on the continent, and 
crowded with man-killing outlaws and road agents ; and he 
produced telegrams from judges of high character testifying 
to the need of the actions he had taken. Finally I said : 
"Now, Ben, how did you lose that half of your ear .'"' To 
which, looking rather shy, he responded : "Well, Colonel, it 
was bit off." "How did it happen, Ben ?'' "Well, you 
see, I was sent to arrest a gentleman, and him and me mixed 
it up, and he bit off my ear." "What did you do to the 
gentleman, Ben ?" And Ben, looking more coy than ever, 
responded: "Well, Colonel, we broke about even !" I fore- 
bore to inquire what variety of mayhem he had committed 
on the "gentleman." After considerable struggle I got 
him confirmed by the Senate, and he made one of the best 
marshals in the entire service, exactly as he had already made 
one of the best soldiers in the regiment ; and I never wish 
to see a better citizen, nor a man in whom I would more 
implicitly trust in every way. 

When, in 1900, I was nominated for Vice-President, I was 
sent by the National Committee on a trip into the States of 
the high plains and the Rocky Mountains. These had all 
gone overwhelmingly for Mr. Bryan on the free-silver issue 
four years previously, and it was thought that I, because of 
my knowledge of and acquaintanceship with the people, 
might accomplish something towards bringing them back 
into line. It was an interesting trip, and the monotony 
usually attendant upon such a campaign of political speak- 
ing was diversified in vivid fashion by occasional hostile 
audiences. One or two of the meetings ended in riots. 



142 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

One meeting was finally broken up by a mob ; everybody 
fought so that the speaking had to stop. Soon after this 
we reached another town where we were told there might be 
trouble. Here the local committee included an old and 
valued friend, a "two-gun" man of repute, who was not in 
the least quarrelsome, but who always kept his word. We 
marched round to the local opera-house, which was packed 
with a mass of men, many of them rather rough-looking. 
My friend the two-gun man sat immediately behind me, a 
gun on each hip, his arms folded, looking at the audience ; 
fixing his gaze with instant intentness on any section of the 
house from which there came so much as a whisper. The 
audience listened to me with rapt attention. At the end, 
with a pride in my rhetorical powers which proceeded from a 
misunderstanding of the situation, I remarked to the chair- 
man : "I held that audience well; there wasn't an inter- 
ruption." To which the chairman replied : "Interruption .'* 
Well, I guess not ! Seth had sent round word that if any 
son of a gun peeped he'd kill him !" 

There was one bit of frontier philosophy which I should 
like to see imitated in more advanced communities. Cer- 
tain crimes of revolting baseness and cruelty were never for- 
given. But in the case of ordinary offenses, the man who 
had served his term and who then tried to make good was 
given a fair chance ; and of course this was equally true of 
the women. Every one who has studied the subject at all 
is only too well aware that the world offsets the readiness with 
which it condones a crime for which a man escapes punish- 
ment, by its unforgiving relentlessness to the often far less 
guilty man who is punished, and who therefore has made his 
atonement. On the frontier, if the man honestly tried to 
behave himself there was generally a disposition to give him 
fair play and a decent show. Several of the men I knew 
and whom I particularly liked came in this class. There 
was one such man in my regiment, a man who had served 
a term for robbery under arms, and who had atoned for it 
by many years of fine performance of duty. I put him in a 
high official position, and no man under me rendered better 
service to the State, nor was there any man whom, as soldier. 



IN COWBOY LAND 143 

as civil officer, as citizen, and as friend, I valued and re- 
spected — and now value and respect — more. 

Now I suppose some good people will gather from this 
that I favor men who commit crimes. I certainly do not 
favor them. I have not a particle of sympathy with the 
sentimentality — as I deem it, the mawkishness — which 
overflows with foolish pity for the criminal and cares not at 
all for the victim of the criminal. I am glad to see wrong- 
doers punished. The punishment is an absolute necessity 
from the standpoint of society ; and I put the reformation 
of the criminal second to the welfare of society. But I do 
desire to see the man or woman who has paid the penalty 
and who wishes to reform given a helping hand — surely 
every one of us who knows his own heart must know that he 
too may stumble, and should be anxious to help his brother 
or sister who has stumbled. When the criminal has been 
punished, if he then shows a sincere desire to lead a decent 
and upright life, he should be given the chance, he should 
be helped and not hindered ; and if he makes good, he should 
receive that respect from others which so often aids in creat- 
ing self-respect — the most invaluable of all possessions. 



CHAPTER V 



APPLIED IDEALISM 



IN the spring of 1889 I was appointed by President 
Harrison Civil Service Commissioner. For nearly 
five years I had not been very active in political life ; 
although I had done some routine work in the or- 
ganization and had made campaign speeches, and in 1886 
had run for Mayor of New York against Abram S. Hewitt, 

Democrat, and Henry George, In- 
dependent, and had been defeated. 
I served six years as Civil Serv- 
ice Commissioner — four years 
under President Harrison and then 
two years under President Cleve- 
land. I was treated by both 
Presidents with the utmost con- 
sideration. Among my fellow- 
Commissioners there was at one 
time ex-Governor Hugh Thompson, 
of South Carolina, and at another 
time John R. Proctor, of Kentucky. 
They were Democrats and ex-Con- 
federate soldiers. I became deeply 
attached to both, and we stood 
shoulder to shoulder in every con- 
test in which the Commission was 
forced to take part. 

Civil Service Reform had two 
sides There was, first, the effort to secure a more efficient 
administration of the public service, and, second, the even 
more important efi^ort to withdraw the administrative 
offices of the Government from the domain of spoils 

144 




Theodore Roosevelt. 
Civil Service Commissioner. 



APPLIED IDEALISxM 145 

politics, and thereby cut out of American political life a 
fruitful source of corruption and degradation. The spoils 
theory of politics is that public office is so much plun- 
der which the victorious political party is entitled to 
appropriate to the use of its adherents. Under this system 
the work of the Government was often done well even 
in those days, when Civil Service Reform was only an 
experiment, because the man running an office if himself 
an able and far-sighted man, knew that inefficiency in 
administration would be visited on his head in the long 
run, and therefore insisted upon most of his subordinates 
doing good work ; and, moreover, the men appointed under 
the spoils system were necessarily men of a certain initiative 
and power, because those who lacked these qualities were 
not able to shoulder themselves to the front. Yet there 
were many flagrant instances of inefficiency, where a power- 
ful chief quartered friend, adherent, or kinsman upon the 
Government. Moreover, the necessarily haphazard nature 
of the employment, the need of obtaining and holding the 
office by service wholly unconnected with official duty, in- 
evitably tended to lower the standard of public morality, 
alike among the office-holders and among the politicians 
who rendered party service with the hope of reward in office. 
Indeed, the doctrine that "To the victor belong the spoils," 
the cynical battle-cry of the spoils politician in America 
for the sixty years preceding my own entrance into public 
life, is so nakedly vicious that few right-thinking men of 
trained mind defend it. To appoint, promote, reduce, and 
expel from the public service, letter-carriers, stenographers, 
women typewriters, clerks, because of the politics of them- 
selves or their friends, without regard to their own service, 
is, from the standpoint of the people at large, as foolish and 
degrading as it is wicked. 

Such being the case, it would seem at first sight extraor- 
dinary that it should be so difficult to uproot the system. 
Unfortunately, it was permitted to become habitual and 
traditional in American life, so that the conception of public 
office as something to be used primarily for the good of the 
dominant political party became ingrained in the mind of 



146 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

the average American, and he grew so accustomed to the 
whole process that it seemed part of the order of nature. 
Not merely the politicians but the bulk of the people ac- 
cepted this in a matter-of-course way as the only proper at- 
titude. There were plenty of communities where the citi- 
zens themselves did not think it natural, or indeed proper, 
that the Post-Office should be held by a man belonging to 
the defeated party. Moreover, unless both sides were for- 
bidden to use the offices for purposes of political reward, the 
side that did use them possessed such an advantage over 
the other that in the long run it was out of the question for 
the other not to follow the bad example that had been set. 
Each party profited by the offices when in power, and when 
in opposition each party insincerely denounced its opponents 
for doing exactly what it itself had done and intended again 
to do. 

It was necessary, in order to remedy the evil, both grad- 
ually to change the average citizen's mental attitude toward 
the question, and also to secure proper laws and proper ad- 
ministration of the laws. The work is far from finished 
even yet. There are still masses of office-holders who can 
be used by an unscrupulous Administration to debauch 
political conventions and fraudulently overcome public 
sentiment, especially in the "rotten borough" districts — ■ 
those where the party is not strong, and where the office- 
holders in consequence have a disproportionate influence. 
This was done by the Republican Administration in 191 2, 
to the ruin of the Republican party. Moreover, there are 
numbers of States and municipalities where very little has 
as yet been done to do away with the spoils system. But 
in the National Government scores of thousands of offices 
have been put under the merit system, chiefly through the 
action of the National Civil Service Commission. 

The use of Government offices as patronage is a handicap 
difficult to overestimate from the standpoint of those who 
strive to get good government. Any effort for reform of any 
sort. National, State, or municipal, results in the reformers 
immediately finding themselves face to face with an or- 
ganized band of drilled mercenaries who are paid out of the 



APPLIED IDEALISM 147 

public chest to train themselves with such skill that ordinary 
good citizens when they meet them at the polls are in much 
the position of militia matched against regular troops. Yet 
these citizens themselves support and pay their opponents 
in such a way that they are drilled to overthrow the very 
men who support them. Civil Service Reform is designed 
primarily to give the average American citizen a fair chance 
in politics, to give to this citizen the same weight in politics 
that the "ward heeler" has. 

Patronage does not really help a party. It helps the 
bosses to get control of the machinery of the party — as in 
1912 was true of the Republican party — but it does not 
help the party. On the average, the most sweeping party 
victories in our history have been won when the patronage 
was against the victors. All that the patronage does is to 
help the worst element in the party retain control of the 
party organization. Two of the evil elements in our Gov- 
ernment against which good citizens have to contend are, 
I, the lack of continuous activity on the part of these good 
citizens themselves, and, 2, the ever-present activity of 
those who have only an evil self-interest in political life. 
It is difficult to interest the average citizen in any particular 
movement to the degree of getting him to take an efficient 
part in it. He wishes the movement well, but he will not, 
or often cannot, take the time and the trouble to serve it 
efficiently ; and this whether he happens to be a mechanic 
or a banker, a telegraph operator or a storekeeper. He 
has his own interests, his own business, and it is difficult 
for him to spare the time to go around to the primaries, to 
see to the organization, to see to getting out the vote — in 
short, to attend to all the thousand details of political 
management. 

On the other hand, the spoils system breeds a class of 
men whose financial interest it is to take this necessary time 
and trouble. They are paid for so doing, and they are paid 
out of the public chest. Under the spoils system a man is 
appointed to an ordinary clerical or ministerial position in 
the municipal, Federal, or State government, not primarily 
because he is expected to be a good servant, but because he 



148 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

has rendered help to some big boss or to the henchman of 
some big boss. His stay in office depends not upon how he 
performs service, but upon how he retains his influence in 
the party. This necessarily means that his attention to the 
interests of the public at large, even though real, is secondary 
to his devotion to his organization, or to the interest of the 
ward leader who put him in his place. So he and his fellows 
attend to politics, not once a year, not two or three times a 
year, like the average citizen, but every day in the year. 
It is the one thing that they talk of, for it is their bread and 
butter. They plan about it and they scheme about it. 
They do it because it is their business. I do not blame them 
in the least. I blame us, the people, for we ought to make it 
clear as a bell that the business of serving the people in one 
of the ordinary ministerial Government positions, which have 
nothing to do with deciding the policy of the Government, 
should have no necessary connection with the management 
of primaries, of caucuses, and of nominating conventions. 
As a result of our wrong thinking and supineness, we Amer- 
ican citizens tend to breed a mass of men whose interests in 
governmental matters are often adverse to ours, who are 
thoroughly drilled, thoroughly organized, who make their 
livelihood out of politics, and who frequently make their 
livelihood out of bad politics. They know every little twist 
and turn, no matter how intricate, in the politics of their 
several wards, and when election day comes the ordinary 
citizen who has merely the interest that all good men, all 
decent citizens, should have in political life, finds himself 
as helpless before these men as if he were a solitary volunteer 
in the presence of a band of drilled mercenaries on a field of 
battle. There are a couple of hundred thousand Federal 
offices, not to speak of State and municipal offices. The 
men who fill these offices, and the men who wish to fill them, 
within and without the dominant party for the time being, 
make a regular army, whose interest it is that the system of 
bread-and-butter politics shall continue. Against their 
concrete interest we have merely the generally unorganized 
sentiment of the community in favor of putting things on a 
decent basis. The large number of men who believe vaguely 



APPLIED IDEALISM 149 

in good are pitted against the smaller but still larger number 
of men whose Interest It often becomes to act very concretely 
and actively for evil ; and It Is small wonder that the struggle 
is doubtful. 

During my six years' service as Commissioner the field 
of the merit system was extended at the expense of the spoils 
system so as to Include several times the number of offices 
that had originally been included. Generally this was done 
by the Introduction of competitive entrance examinations ; 
sometimes, as In the Navy-Yards, by a system of registra- 
tion. This of Itself was good work. 

Even better work was making the law efficient and gen- 
uine where It applied. As was inevitable In the Introduction 
of such a system, there was at first only partial success In Its 
application. For Instance, It applied to the ordinary em- 
ployees in the big custom-houses and post-offices, but not 
to the heads of these offices. A number of the heads of the 
offices were slippery politicians of a low moral grade, them- 
selves appointed under the spoils system, and anxious, 
directly or Indirectly, to break down the merit system and 
to pay their own political debts by appointing their hench- 
men and supporters to the positions under them. Occa- 
sionally these men acted with open and naked brutality. 
Ordinarily they sought by cunning to evade the law. The 
Civil Service Reformers, on the other hand, were In most 
cases not much used to practical politics, and were often 
well-nigh helpless when pitted against veteran professional 
politicians. In consequence I found at the beginning of my 
experiences that there were many offices in which the exe- 
cution of the law was a sham. This was very damaging, 
because it encouraged the politicians to assault the law every- 
where, and, on the other hand, made good people feel that 
the law was not worth while defending. 

The first effort of myself and my colleagues was to secure 
the genuine enforcement of the law. In this we succeeded 
after a number of lively fights. But of course In these fights 
we were obliged to strike a large number of Influential poli- 
ticians, some of them In Congress, some of them the sup- 
porters and backers of men who were In Congress. Accord- 



ISO THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

ingly we soon found ourselves engaged in a series of contests 
with prominent Senators and Congressmen. Tiiere were a 
number of Senators and Congressmen — men like Congress- 
man (afterwards Senator) H. C. Lodge, of Massachusetts ; 
Senator Cushman K, Davis, of Minnesota ; Senator Orville 
H. Piatt, of Connecticut; Senator Cockrell, of Missouri; 
Congressman (afterwards President) McKinley, of Ohio, 
and Congressman Dargan, of South Carolina — who ab- 
horred the business of the spoilsman, who efficiently and 
resolutely championed the reform at every turn, and with- 
out whom the whole reform would certainly have failed. 
But there were plenty of other Senators and Congressmen 
who hated the whole reform and everything concerned with 
it and everybody who championed it; and sometimes, to 
use a legal phrase, their hatred was for cause, and sometimes 
it was peremptory — that is, sometimes the Commission 
interfered with their most efficient, and incidentally most 
corrupt and unscrupulous, supporters, and at other times, 
where there was no such interference, a man nevertheless 
had an innate dislike of anything that tended to decency in" 
government. These men were always waging war against 
us, and they usually had the more or less open support of a 
certain number of Government officials, from Cabinet officers 
down. The Senators and Congressmen in question opposed 
us in many different ways. Sometimes, for instance, they 
had committees appointed to investigate us — during my 
public career without and within office I grew accustomed to 
accept appearances before investigating committees as part 
of the natural order of things. Sometimes they tried to cut 
off the appropriation for the Commission. 

Occasionally we would bring to terms these Senators or 
Congressmen who fought the Commission by the simple 
expedient of not holding examinations in their districts. 
This always brought frantic appeals from their constituents, 
and we would explain that unfortunately the appropriations 
had been cut, so that we could not hold examinations in 
every district, and that obviously we could not neglect the 
districts of those Congressmen who believed in the reform 
and therefore in the examinations. The constituents then 



APPLIED IDEALISM 151 

turned their attention to the Congressman, and the result 
was that in the long run we obtained sufficient money to 
enable us to do our work. On the whole, the most prom- 
inent leaders favored us. Any man who is the head of a 
big department, if he has any fitness at all, wishes to see that 
department run well ; and a very little practical experience 
shows him that it cannot be run well if he must make his 
appointments to please spoilsmongering politicians. As with 
almost every reform that I have ever undertaken, most of 
the opposition took the guise of shrewd slander. Our op- 
ponents relied chiefly on downright misrepresentation of 
what it was that we were trying to accomplish, and of our 
methods, acts, and personalities. I had more than one 
lively encounter with the authors and sponsors of these mis- 
representations, which at the time were full of interest to 
me. But it would be a dreary thing now to go over the record 
of exploded mendacity, or to expose the meanness and malice 
shown by some men of high official position. A favorite 
argument was to call the reform Chinese, because the 
Chinese had constructed an inefficient governmental system 
based in part on the theory of written competitive examina- 
tions. The argument was simple. There had been written 
examinations in China ; it was proposed to establish written 
examinations in the United States ; therefore the proposed 
system was Chinese. The argument might have been ap- 
plied still further. For instance, the Chinese had used 
gunpowder for centuries ; gunpowder is used in Springfield 
rifles ; therefore Springfield rifles were Chinese. One argu- 
ment is quite as logical as the other. It was impossible to 
answer every falsehood about the system. But it was possible 
to answer certain falsehoods, especially when uttered by some 
Senator or Congressman of note. Usually these false 
statements took the form of assertions that we had asked 
preposterous questions of applicants. At times they also 
included the assertion that we credited people to districts 
where they did not live ; this simply meaning that these 
persons were not known to the active ward politicians of 
those districts. 

One opponent with whom we had a rather lively tilt was 



152 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

a Republican Congressman from Ohio, Mr. Grosvenor, one 
of the floor leaders. Mr. Grosvenor made his attack in 
the House, and enumerated our sins in picturesque rather 
than accurate fashion. There was a Congressional com- 
mittee investigating us at the time, and on my next appear- 
ance before them I asked that Mr. Grosvenor be requested 
to meet me before the committee. Mr. Grosvenor did not 
take up the challenge for several weeks, until it was announced 
that I was leaving for my ranch in Dakota ; whereupon, 
deeming it safe, he wrote me a letter expressing his ardent 
wish that I should appear before the committee to meet 
him. I promptly canceled my ticket, waited, and met him. 
He proved to be a person of happily treacherous memory, 
so that the simple expedient of arranging his statements in 
pairs was sufficient to reduce him to confusion. For in- 
stance, he had been trapped into making the unwary remark, 
"I do not want to repeal the Civil Service Law, and I never 
said so." I produced the following extract from one of his 
speeches : "I will vote not only to strike out this provision, 
but I will vote to repeal the whole law." To this he merely 
replied that there was "no inconsistency between those 
two statements." He asserted that "Rufus P. Putnam, 
fraudulently credited to Washington County, Ohio, never 
lived in Washington County, Ohio, or in my Congressional 
district, or in Ohio as far as I know." We produced a letter 
which, thanks to a beneficent Providence, he had himself 
written about Mr. Rufus P. Putnam, in which he said : 
"Mr. Rufus P. Putnam is a legal resident of my district 
and has relatives living there now." He explained, first, 
that he had not written the letter ; second, that he had for- 
gotten he had written the letter ; and, third, that he was 
grossly deceived when he wrote it. He said: "I have not 
been informed of one applicant who has found a place in the 
classified service from my district." We confronted him 
with the names of eight. He looked them over and said, 
"Yes, the eight men are living in my district as now con- 
stituted," but added that his district had been gerryman- 
dered so that he could no longer tell who did and who didn't 
live in it. When I started further to question him, he ac- 



APPLIED IDEALISM 153 

cused me of a lack of humor In not appreciating that his 
statements were made "in a jesting way," and then an- 
nounced that "a Congressman malcing a speech on the floor 
of the House of Representatives was perhaps in a little 
different position from a witness on the witness stand" — a 
frank admission that he did not consider exactitude of 
statement necessary when he was speaking as a Congress- 
man. Finally he rose with great dignity and said that it 
was his "constitutional right" not to be questioned else- 
where as to what he said on the floor of the House of Rep- 
resentatives ; and accordingly he left the delighted com- 
mittee to pursue its investigations without further aid from 
him. 

A more important opponent was the then Democratic 
leader of the Senate, Mr. Gorman. In a speech attacking 
the Commission Mr. Gorman described with moving pathos 
how a friend of his, "a bright young man from Baltimore," 
a Sunday-school scholar, well recommended by his pastor, 
wished to be a letter-carrier; and how he went before us 
to be examined. The first question we asked him, said Mr. 
Gorman, was the shortest route from Baltimore to China, 
to which the "bright young man" responded that he didn't 
want to go to China, and had never studied up that route. 
Thereupon, said Mr. Gorman, we asked him all about the 
steamship lines from the United States to Europe, then 
branched him off into geology, tried him in chemistry, and 
finally turned him down. 

Apparently Mr. Gorman did not know that we kept full 
records of our examinations. I at once wrote to him stating 
that I had carefully looked through all our examination 
papers and had not been able to find one question even re- 
motely resembling any of these questions which he alleged 
had been asked, and that I would be greatly obliged if he 
would give me the name of the "bright young man" who 
had deceived him. 

However, that "bright young man" remained perma- 
nently without a name. I also asked Mr. Gorman, if he did 
not wish to give us the name of his informant, to give us the 
date of the examination in which he was supposed to have 



154 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

taken part; and I offered, if he would send down a repre- 
sentative to look through our files, to give him all the aid 
we could in his effort to discover any such questions. But 
Mr. Gorman, not hitherto known as a sensitive soul, ex- 
pressed himself as so shocked at the thought that the ve- 
racity of the "bright young man" should be doubted that 
he could not bring himself to answer my letter. So I made 
a public statement to the effect that no such questions had 
ever been asked. Mr. Gorman brooded over this ; and 
during the next session of Congress he rose and complained 
that he had received a very "impudent" letter from me 
(my letter was a respectful note calling attention to the fact 
that, if he wished, he could by personal examination satisfy 
himself that his statements had no foundation in fact). He 
further stated that he had been "cruelly" called to account 
by me because he had been endeavoring to right a "great 
wrong" that the Civil Service Commission had committed; 
but he never, then or afterwards, furnished any clue to the 
identity of that child of his fondest fancy, the bright 
young man without a name.^ 

The incident is of note chiefly as shedding light on the 
mental make-up of the man who at the time was one of the 
two or three most influential leaders of the Democratic 
party. Mr. Gorman had been Mr. Cleveland's party 
manager in the Presidential campaign, and was the Demo- 
cratic leader in Congress. It seemed extraordinary that 
he should be so reckless as to make statements with no 
foundation in fact, which he might have known that I would 
not permit to pass unchallenged. Then, as now, the or- 
dinary newspaper, in New York and elsewhere, was quite 
as reckless in its misstatements of fact about public men and 
measures ; but for a man in Mr. Gorman's position of re- 
sponsible leadership such action seemed hardly worth while. 
However, it is at least to be said for Mr. Gorman that he 
was not trying by falsehood to take away any man's char- 
acter. It would be well for writers and speakers to bear in 

1 This is a condensation of a speech I at the time made to the St. Louis Civil 
Service Reform Association. Senator Gorman was then the Senate leader of the 
party that had just been victorious in the Congressional elections. 



APPLIED IDEALISM 155 

mind the remark of Pudd'nhead Wilson to the effect that 
while there are nine hundred and ninety-nine kinds of false- 
hood, the only kind specifically condemned in Scripture, 
just as murder, theft, and adultery are condemned, is bear- 
ing false witness against one's neighbor. 

One of the worst features of the old spoils system was the 
ruthless cruelty and brutality it so often bred in the treat- 
ment of faithful public servants without political influence. 
Life is hard enough and cruel enough at best, and this is as 
true of public service as of private service. Under no system 
will it be possible to do away with all favoritism and bru- 
tality and meanness and malice. But at least we can try to 
minimize the exhibition of these qualities. I once came 
across a case in Washington which very keenly excited my 
sympathy. Under an Administration prior to the one 
with which I was connected a lady had been ousted from a 
Government position. She came to me to see if she could 
be reinstated. (This was not possible, but by active work 
I did get her put back in a somewhat lower position, and 
this only by an appeal to the sympathy of a certain official.) 
She was so pallid and so careworn that she excited my 
sympathy and I made inquiries about her. She was a poor 
woman with two children, a widow. She and her two chil- 
dren were in actual want. She could barely keep the two 
children decently clad, and she could not give them the food 
growing children need. Three years before she had been 
employed in a bureau in a department of Washington, doing 
her work faithfully, at a salary of about ^800. It was 
enough to keep her and her two children in clothing, food, 
and shelter. One day the chief of the bureau called her up 
and told her he was very sorry that he had to dismiss her. 
In great distress she asked him why ; she thought that she had 
been doing her work satisfactorily. He answered her that she 
had been doing well, and that he wished very much that he 
could keep her, that he would do so if he possibly could, 
but that he could not ; for a certain Senator, giving his 
name, a very influential member of the Senate, had de- 
manded her place for a friend of his who had influence. 
The woman told the bureau chief that it meant turning her 



156 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

out to starve. She had been thirteen or fourteen years in 
the public service ; she had lost all touch with her friends 
in her native State ; dismissal meant absolute want for her 




Copyright by Clinedlnst. 



Mark Hanna. 



'A man of rugged sincerity of purpose, of great courage and loyalty, and of unswerving 
devotion to the interests of the Nation and the people as he saw those interests." 



and her children. On this the chief, who was a kind man, 
said he would not have her turned out, and sent her back to 
her work. 

But three weeks afterwards he called her up again and 



APPLIED IDEALISM 157 

told her he could not say how sorry he was, but the thing had 
to be done. The Senator had been around in person to 
know why the change had not been made, and had told the 
chief that he would be himself removed if the place were not 
given him. The Senator was an extremely influential man. 
His wants had to be attended to, and the woman had to go. 
And go she did, and turned out she was, to suffer with her 
children and to starve outright, or to live in semi-starvation, 
just as might befall. I do not blame the bureau chief, who 
hated to do what he did, although he lacked the courage 
to refuse ; I do not even very much blame the Senator, who 
did not know the hardship that he was causing, and who had 
been calloused by long training in the spoils system ; but 
this system, a system which permits and encourages such 
deeds, is a system of brutal iniquity. 

Any man accustomed to dealing with practical politics 
can with difficulty keep a straight face when he reads or 
listens to some of the arguments advanced against Civil 
Service Reform. One of these arguments, a favorite with 
machine politicians, takes the form of an appeal to "party 
loyalty" in filling minor offices. Why, again and again 
these very same machine politicians take just as good care 
of henchmen of the opposite party as of those of their own 
party. In the underworld of politics the closest ties are 
sometimes those which knit together the active professional 
workers of opposite political parties. A friend of mine in 
the New York Legislature — • the hero of the alpha and 
omega Incident — once remarked to me: "When you have 
been in public life a little longer, Mr. Roosevelt, you will 
understand that there are no politics in politics." In the 
politics to which he was referring this remark could be taken 
literally. 

Another illustration of this truth was incidentally given 
me, at about the same time, by an acquaintance, a Tam- 
many man named Costigan, a good fellow according to his 
lights. I had been speaking to him of a fight in one of the 
New York downtown districts, a Democratic district in which 
the Republican party was in a hopeless minority, and, more- 
over, was split into the Half-Breed and Stalwart factions. 



158 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

It had been an interesting fight in more than one way. For 
instance, the RepubHcan party, at the general election, 
polled something like five hundred and fifty votes, and yet 
at the primary the two factions polled seven hundred and 
twenty-five all told. The sum of the parts was thus con- 
siderably greater than the whole. There had been other 
little details that made the contest worthy of note. The 
hall in which the primary was held had been hired by the 
Stalwarts from a conscientious gentleman. To him the 
Half-Breeds applied to know whether they could not hire 
the hall away from their opponents, and offered him a sub- 
stantial money advance. The conscientious gentleman re- 
plied that his word was as good as his bond, that he had 
hired the hall to the Stalwarts, and that it must be theirs. 
But he added that he was willing to hire the doorway to the 
Half-Breeds if they paid him the additional sum of money 
they had mentioned. The bargain was struck, and the 
meeting of the hostile hosts was spirited, when the men who 
had rented the doorway sought to bar the path of the men 
who had rented the hall. I was asking my friend Costigan 
about the details of the struggle, as he seemed thoroughly 
acquainted with them, and he smiled good-naturedly over 
my surprise at there having been more votes cast than there 
were members of the party in the whole district. Said I, 
"Mr. Costigan, you seem to have a great deal of knowledge 
about this; how did it happen.^" To which he replied, 
"Come now, Mr. Roosevelt, you know it's the same gang 
that votes in all the primaries." 

So much for most of the opposition to the reform. There 
was, however, some honest and at least partially justifiable 
opposition both to certain of the methods advocated by 
Civil Service Reformers and to certain of the Civil Service 
Reformers themselves. The pet shibboleths of the op- 
ponents of the reform were that the system we proposed to 
introduce would give rise to mere red-tape bureaucracy, 
and that the reformers were pharisees. Neither statement 
was true. Each statement contained some truth. 

If men are not to be appointed by favoritism, wise or un- 
wise, honest or dishonest, they must be appointed in some 



APPLIED IDEALISM 159 

automatic way, which generally means by competitive ex- 
amination. The easiest kind of competitive examination is 
an examination in writing. This is entirely appropriate 
for certain classes of work, for lawyers, stenographers, type- 
writers, clerks, mathematicians, and assistants in an as- 
tronomical observatory, for instance. It is utterly inap- 
propriate for carpenters, detectives, and mounted cattle 
inspectors along the Rio Grande — to instance three types 
of employment as to which I had to do battle to prevent 
well-meaning bureaucrats from insisting on written com- 
petitive entrance examinations. It would be quite possible 
to hold a very good competitive examination for mounted 
cattle inspectors by means of practical tests in brand reading 
and shooting with rifle and revolver, in riding "mean" 
horses and in roping and throwing steers. I did my best to 
have examinations of this kind instituted, but my proposal 
was of precisely the type which most shocks the routine 
official mind, and I was nev^er able to get it put into practical 
effect. 

The important point, and the point most often forgotten 
by zealous Civil Service Reformers, was to remember that 
the routine competitive examination was merely a means to 
an end. It did not always produce ideal results. But it 
was normally better than a system of appointments for 
spoils purposes ; it sometimes worked out very well indeed ; 
and in most big governmental offices it not only gave satis- 
factory results, but was the only system under which good 
results could be obtained. For instance, when I was Police 
Commissioner we appointed some two thousand policemen 
at one time. It was utterly impossible for the Commis- 
sioners each to examine personally the six or eight thousand 
applicants. Therefore they had to be appointed either on 
the recommendation of outsiders or else by written com- 
petitive examination. The latter method — the one we 
adopted — was infinitely preferable. We held a rigid phys- 
ical and moral pass examination, and then, among those 
who passed, we held a written competitive examination, re- 
quiring only the knowledge that any good primary common 
school education would meet — that is, a test of ordinary 



i6o THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

intelligence and simple mental training. Occasionally a 
man who would have been a good officer failed, and occa- 
sionally a man who turned out to be a bad officer passed ; 
but, as a rule, the men with intelligence sufficient to enable 
them to answer the questions were of a type very distinctly 
above that of those who failed. 

The answers returned to some of the questions gave an 
illuminating idea of the intelligence of those answering them. 
For instance, one of our questions in a given examination 
was a request to name five of the New England States. 
One competitor, obviously of foreign birth, answered : 
"England, Ireland, Scotland, Whales, and Cork." His 
neighbor, who had probably looked over his shoulder but 
who had North of Ireland prejudices, made the same answer 
except that he substituted Belfast for Cork. A request for 
a statement as to the life of Abraham Lincoln elicited, 
among other less startling pieces of information, the fact 
that many of the applicants thought that he was a general 
in the Civil War; several thought that he was President of 
the Confederate States ; three thought he had been assas- 
sinated by Jefferson Davis, one by Thomas Jefferson, one 
by Garfield, several by Guiteau, and one by Ballington 
Booth — the last representing a memory of the fact that he 
had been shot by a man named Booth, to whose surname 
the writer added the name with which he was most familiar 
in connection therewith. A request to name five of the 
States that seceded in 1861 received answers that included 
almost every State in the Union. It happened to be at the 
time of the silver agitation in the West, and the Rocky 
Mountain States accordingly figured in a large percentage 
of the answers. Some of the men thought that Chicago 
was on the Pacific Ocean. Others, in answer to a query as 
to who was the head of the United States Government, 
wavered between myself and Recorder Goff ; one brilliant 
genius, for inscrutable reasons, placed the leadership in the 
New York Fire Department. Now of course some of the 
men who answered these questions wrong were nevertheless 
quite capable of making good policemen ; but it is fair to 
assume that on the average the candidate who has a rudi- 



APPLIED IDEALISM i6i 

mentary knowledge of the government, geography, and 
history of his country is a Httle better fitted, in point of 
intelligence, to be a policeman than the one who has not. 

Therefore I felt convinced, after full experience, that as 
regards very large classes of public servants by far the best 
way to choose the men for appointment was by means of 
written competitive examination. But I absolutely split 
off from the bulk of my professional Civil Service Reform 
friends when they advocated written competitive examina- 
tions for promotion. In the Police Department I found 
these examinations a serious handicap in the way of getting 
the best men promoted, and never in any office did I find 
that the written competitive promotion examination did 
any good. The reason for a written competitive entrance 
examination is that it is impossible for the head of the office, 
or the candidate's prospective immediate superior, himself 
to know the average candidate or to test his ability. But 
when once in office the best way to test any man's ability 
is by long experience in seeing him actually at work. His 
promotion should depend upon the judgment formed of him 
by his superiors. 

So much for the objections to the examinations. Now 
for the objections to the men who advocated the reform. 
As a rule these men were high-minded and disinterested. 
Certain of them, men like the leaders in the Maryland 
and Indiana Reform Associations, for instances, Alessrs. 
Bonaparte and Rose, Foulke and Swift, added common 
sense, broad sympathy, and practical efficiency to their 
high-mindedness. But in New York, Philadelphia, and 
Boston there really was a certain mental and moral thin- 
ness among very many of the leaders in the Civil Service 
Reform movement. It was this quality which made them 
so profoundly antipathetic to vigorous and intensely human 
people of the stamp of my friend Joe Murray — who, as I 
have said, always felt that my Civil Service Reform affilia- 
tions formed the one blot on an otherwise excellent public 
record. The Civil Service Reform movement was one from 
above downwards, and the men who took the lead in it 
were not men who as a rule possessed a very profound sym- 



i62 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

pathy with or understanding of the ways of thought and 
life of their average fellow-citizen. They were not men who 
themselves desired to be letter-carriers or clerks or policemen, 
or to have their friends appointed to these positions. Hav- 
ing no temptation themselves in this direction, they were 
eagerly anxious to prevent other people getting such appoint- 
ments as a reward for political services. In this they were 
quite right. It would be impossible to run any big public 
office to advantage save along the lines of the strictest ap- 
plication of Civil Service Reform principles ; and the system 
should be extended throughout our governmental service 
far more widely than is now the case. 

But there are other and more vital reforms than this. 
Too many Civil Service Reformers, when the trial came, 
proved tepidly indifferent or actively hostile to reforms that 
were of profound and far-reaching social and industrial con- 
sequence. Many of them were at best lukewarm about 
movements for the improvement of the conditions of toil 
and life among men and women who labor under hard sur- 
roundings, and were positively hostile to movements which 
curbed the power of the great corporation magnates and 
directed into useful instead of pernicious channels the 
activities of the great corporation lawyers who advised 
them. 

Most of the newspapers which regarded themselves as 
the especial champions of Civil Service Reform and as the 
highest exponents of civic virtue, and which distrusted the 
average citizen and shuddered over the "coarseness" of 
the professional politicians, were, nevertheless, given to 
vices even more contemptible than, although not so gross as, 
those they denounced and derided. Their editors were 
refined men of cultivated tastes, whose pet temptations were 
backbiting, mean slander, and the snobbish worship of any- 
thing clothed in wealth and the outward appearances of 
conventional respectability. They were not robust or 
powerful men ; they felt ill at ease in the company of rough, 
strong men ; often they had in them a vein of physical 
timidity. They avenged themselves to themselves for an 
uneasy subconsciousness of their own shortcomings by sitting 



APPLIED IDEALISM 163 

in cloistered — or, rather, pleasantly upholstered — se- 
clusion, and sneering at and lying about men who made 
them feel uncomfortable. Sometimes these were bad men, 
who made them feel uncomfortable by the exhibition of 
coarse and repellent vice ; and sometimes they were men of 
high character, who held ideals of courage and of service to 
others, and who looked down and warred against the short- 
comings of swollen wealth, and the effortless, easy lives of 
those whose horizon is bounded by a sheltered and timid 
respectability. These newspapers, owned and edited by these 
men, although free from the repulsive vulgarity of the 
yellow press, were susceptible to influence by the priv^ileged 
interests, and were almost or quite as hostile to manliness 
as they were to unrefined vice — and were much more hostile 
to it than to the typical shortcomings of wealth and refine- 
ment. They favored Civil Service Reform ; they favored 
copyright laws, and the removal of the tariff on works of 
art ; they favored all the proper (and even more strongly 
all the improper) movements for international peace and 
arbitration ; in short, they favored all good, and many 
goody-goody, measures so long as they did not cut deep into 
social wrong or make demands on National and individual 
virility. They opposed, or were lukewarm about, efforts 
to build up the army and the navy, for they were not sensi- 
tive concerning National honor; and, above all, they op- 
posed every non-milk-and-water effort, however sane, to 
change our social and economic system in such a fashion 
as to substitute the ideal of justice towards all for the ideal 
of kindly charity from the favored few to the possibly grate- 
ful many. 

Some of the men foremost in the struggle for Civil Service 
Reform have taken a position of honorable leadership in the 
battle for those other and more vital reforms. But many of 
them promptly abandoned the field of effort for decency 
when the battle took the form, not of a fight against the 
petty grafting of small bosses and small politicians — a 
vitally necessary battle, be it remembered — but of a fight 
against the great intrenched powers of privilege, a fight to 
secure justice through the law for ordinary men and women, 



1 



i64 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

instead of leaving them to suffer cruel injustice either be- 
cause the law failed to protect them or because it was twisted 
from its legitimate purposes into a means for oppressing 
them. 

One of the reasons why the boss so often keeps his hold, 
especially in municipal matters, is, or at least has been in the 
past, because so many of the men who claim to be reformers 
have been blind to the need of working in human fashion for 
social and industrial betterment. Such words as "boss" 
and "machine" now imply evil, but both the implication 
the words carry and the definition of the words themselves 
are somewhat vague. A leader is necessary ; but his op- 
ponents always call him a boss. An organization is neces- 
sary ; but the men in opposition always call it a machine. 
Nevertheless, there is a real and deep distinction between 
the leader and the boss, between organizations and machines. 
A political leader who fights openly for principles, and who 
keeps his position of leadership by stirring the consciences 
and convincing the intellects of his followers, so that they 
have confidence in him and will follow him because they can 
achieve greater results under him than under any one else, 
is doing work which is indispensable in a democracy. The 
boss, on the other hand, is a man who does not gain his 
power by open means, but by secret means, and usually 
by corrupt means. Some of the worst and most powerful 
bosses in our political history either held no public office or 
else some unimportant public office. They made no appeal 
either to intellect or conscience. Their work was done 
behind closed doors, and consisted chiefly in the use of that 
greed which gives in order that in return it may get. A boss 
of this kind can pull wires in conventions, can manipulate 
members of the Legislature, can control the giving or with- 
holding of office, and serves as the intermediary for bringing 
together the powers of corrupt politics and corrupt business. 
If he is at one end of the social scale, he may through his 
agents traffic in the most brutal forms of vice and give pro- 
tection to the purveyors of shame and sin in return for money 
bribes. If at the other end of the scale, he may be the means 
of securing favors from high public officials, legislative or 



APPLIED IDEALISM 165 

executive, to great industrial interests ; the transaction 
being sometimes a naked matter of bargain and sale, and 
sometimes being carried on in such manner that both parties 
thereto can more or less successfully disguise it to their con- 
sciences as in the public interest. The machine is simply 
another name for the kind of organization which is certain 
to grow up in a party or section of a party controlled by such 
bosses as these and by their henchmen, whereas, of course, 
an effective organization of decent men is essential in order 
to secure decent politics. 

If these bosses were responsible for nothing but pure 
wickedness, they would probably last but a short time in any 
community. And, in any event, if the men who are horri- 
fied by their wickedness were themselves as practical and as 
thoroughly in touch with human nature, the bosses would 
have a short shrift. The trouble is that the boss does under- 
stand human nature, and that he fills a place which the re- 
former cannot fill unless he likewise understands human 
nature. Sometimes the boss is a man who cares for political 
power purely for its own sake, as he might care for any other 
hobby; more often he has in view some definitely selfish 
object such as political or financial advancement. He can 
rarely accomplish much unless he has another side to him. 
A successful boss is very apt to be a man who, in addition 
to committing wickedness in his own interest, also does look 
after the interests of others, even if not from good motives. 
There are some communities so fortunate that there are 
very few men who have private interests to be served, and 
in these the power of the boss is at a minimum. There are 
many country communities of this type. But in communi- 
ties where there is poverty and ignorance, the conditions 
are ripe for the growth of a boss. Moreover, wherever big 
business interests are liable either to be improperly favored 
or improperly discriminated against and blackmailed by 
public officials — and the result is just as vicious in one case 
as in the other — the boss is almost certain to develop. The 
best way of getting at this type of boss is by keeping the 
public conscience aroused and alert, so that it will toler- 
ate neither improper attack upon, nor improper favoritism 



i66 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

towards, these corporations, and will quickly punish any 
public servant guilty of either. 

There is often much good in the type of boss, especially 
common in big cities, who fulfills towards the people of his 
district in rough and ready fashion the position of friend 
and protector. He uses his influence to get jobs for young 
men who need them. He goes into court for a wild young 
fellow who has gotten into trouble. He helps out with cash 
or credit the widow who is in straits, or the breadwinner 
who is crippled or for some other cause temporarily out of 
work. He organizes clambakes and chowder parties and 
picnics, and is consulted by the local labor leaders when a 
cut in wages is threatened. For some of his constituents 
he does proper favors, and for others wholly improper 
favors ; but he preserves human relations with all. He 
may be a very bad and very corrupt man, a man whose 
action in blackmailing and protecting vice is of far-reaching 
damage to his constituents. But these constituents are 
for the most part men and women who struggle hard against 
poverty and with whom the problem of living is very real 
and very close. They would prefer clean and honest gov- 
ernment, if this clean and honest government is accom- 
panied by human sympathy, human understanding. But 
an appeal made to them for virtue in the abstract, an appeal 
made by good men who do not really understand their needs, 
will often pass quite unheeded, if on the other side stands the 
boss, the friend and benefactor, who may have been guilty 
of much wrong-doing in things that they are hardly aware 
concern them, but who appeals to them, not only for the 
sake of favors to come, but in the name of gratitude and 
loyalty, and above all of understanding and fellow-feeling. 
They have a feeling of clan-loyalty to him ; his and their 
relations may be substantially those which are right and 
proper among primitive people still in the clan stage of moral 
development. The successful fight against this type of 
vicious boss, and the type of vicious politics which produces 
it, can be made only by men who have a genuine fellow- 
feeling for and understanding of the people for and with 
whom they are to work, and who in practical fashion seek 
their social and industrial benefit. 



APPLIED IDEALISM 167 

There are communities of poor men, whose lives are hard, 
in which the boss, though he would be out of place in a more 
advanced community, if fundamentally an honest man, 
meets a real need which would otherwise not be met. Be- 
cause of his limitations in other than purely local matters 
it may be our duty to fight such a boss ; but it may also be 
our duty to recognize, within his limitations, both his sin- 
cerity and his usefulness. 

Yet again even the boss who really is evil, like the busi- 
ness man who really is evil, may on certain points be sound, 
and be doing good work. It may be the highest duty of the 
patriotic public servant to work with the big boss or the big 
business man on these points, while refusing to work with 
him on others. In the same way there are many self-styled 
reformers whose conduct is such as to warrant Tom Reed's 
bitter remark, that when Dr. Johnson defined patriotism 
as the last refuge of a scoundrel he was ignorant of the 
infinite possibilities contained in the word reform. Yet, 
none the less, it is our duty to work for the reforms these men 
champion, without regard to the misconduct of the men 
themselves on other points. I have known in my life many 
big business men and many big political bosses who often 
or even generally did evil, but who on some occasions and on 
certain issues were right. I never hesitated to do battle 
against these men when they were wrong ; and, on the other 
hand, as long as they were going my way I was glad to have 
them do so. To have repudiated their aid when they were 
right and were striving for a right end, and for what was of 
benefit to the people — no matter what their motives may 
have been — • would have been childish, and moreover would 
have itself been misconduct against the people. 

My duty was to stand with every one while he was right, 
and to stand against him when he went wrong ; and this I 
have tried to do as regards individuals and as regards groups 
of individuals. When a business man or labor leader, poli- 
tician or reformer, is right, I support him ; when he goes 
wrong, I leave him. When Mr. Lorimer upheld the war for 
the liberation of Cuba, I supported him ; when he became 
United States Senator by improper methods, I opposed him. 



1 68 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

The principles or methods which the Socialists advocate and 
which I believe to be in the interest of the people I support, 
and those which I believe to be against the interest of the 
people I oppose. Moreover, when a man has done evil, but 
changes, and works for decency and righteousness, and when, 
as far as I can see, the change is real and the man's conduct 
sincere, then I welcome him and work heartily with him, as 
an equal with an equal. For thirty years after the Civil 
War the creed of mere materialism was rampant in both 
American politics and American business, and many, many 
strong men, in accordance with the prevailing commercial 
and political morality, did things for which they deserve 
blame and condemnation ; but if they now sincerely change, 
and strive for better things, it is unwise and unjust to bar 
them from fellowship. So long as they work for evil, smite 
them with the sword of the Lord and of Gideon ! When 
they change and show their faith by their works, remember 
the words of Ezekiel : "If the wicked will turn from all the 
sins he has committed, and keep all my statutes, and do that 
which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not 
die. All his transgressions that he hath committed, they 
shall not be mentioned unto him : in his righteousness that 
he hath done he shall live. Have I any pleasure at all that 
the wicked should die ? saith the Lord God ; and not that 
he should return from his ways and live .^" 

Every man who has been in practical politics grows to 
realize that politicians, big and little, are no more all of them 
bad than they are all of them good. Many of these men are 
very bad men indeed, but there are others among them — - 
and some among those held up to special obloquy, too — 
who, even although they may have done much that is evil, 
also show traits of sterling worth which many of their critics 
wholly lack. There are few men for whom I have ever felt 
a more. cordial and contemptuous dislike than for some of the 
bosses and big professional politicians with whom I have 
been brought into contact. On the other hand, in the case 
of some political leaders who were most bitterly attacked as 
bosses, I grew to know certain sides of their characters which 
inspired in me a very genuine regard and respect. 



APPLIED IDEALISM 169 

To read much of the assault on Senator Hanna, one would 
have thought that he was a man incapable of patriotism or 
of far-sighted devotion to the country's good. I was brought 
into intimate contact with him only during the two and a 
half years immediately preceding his death. I was then 
President, and perforce watched all his actions at close 
range. During that time he showed himself to be a man of 
rugged sincerity of purpose, of great courage and loyalty, 
and of unswerving devotion to the interests of the Nation 
and the people as he saw those interests. He was as sin- 
cerely desirous of helping laboring men as of helping capital- 
ists. His ideals were in many ways not my ideals, and there 
were points where both by temperament and by conviction 
we were far apart. Before this time he had always been un- 
friendly to me ; and I do not think he ever grew to like me, 
at any rate not until the very end of his life. Moreover, I 
came to the Presidency under circumstances which, if he 
had been a smaller man, would inevitably have thrown him 
into violent antagonism to me. He was the close and in- 
timate friend of President McKinley. He was McKinley's 
devoted ally and follower, and his trusted adviser, who was in 
complete sympathy with him. Partly because of this friend- 
ship, his position in the Senate and in the country was unique. 

With McKinley's sudden death Senator Hanna found 
himself bereft of his dearest friend, while I, who had just 
come to the Presidency, was in his view an untried man, 
whose trustworthiness on many public questions was at 
least doubtful. Ordinarily, as has been shown, not only in 
our history, but in the history of all other countries, in count- 
less instances, over and over again, this situation would have 
meant suspicion, ill will, and, at the last, open and violent 
antagonism. Such was not the result, in this case, pri- 
marily because Senator Hanna had in him the quality that 
enabled him to meet a serious crisis with dignity, with power, 
and with disinterested desire to work for the common good. 
Within a few days of my accession he called on me, and with 
entire friendliness and obvious sincerity, but also with entire 
self-respect, explained that he mourned McKinley as prob- 
ably no other man did ; that he had not been especially my 



I70 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

friend, but that He wished me to understand that thence- 
forward, on every question where he could conscientiously 
support me, I could count upon his giving me as loyal aid 
as it was in his power to render. He added that this must 
not be understood as committing him to favor me for nomina- 
tion and election, because that matter must be left to take 
care of Itself as events should decide ; but that, aside from 
this, what he said was to be taken literally ; in other words, 
he would do his best to make my Administration a success 
by supporting me heartily on every point on which he con- 
scientiously could, and that this I could count upon. He 
kept his word absolutely. He never became especially 
favorable to my nomination ; and most of his close friends 
became bitterly opposed to me and used every effort to 
persuade him to try to bring about my downfall. Most 
men in his position would have been tempted to try to make 
capital at my expense by antagonizing me and discrediting 
me so as to make my policies fail, just for the sake of making 
them fail. Senator Hanna, on the contrary, did everything 
possible to make them succeed. He kept his word in the 
letter and the spirit, and on every point on which he felt 
conscientiously able to support me he gave me the heartiest 
and most effective support, and did all In his power to make 
my Administration a success ; and this with no hope of any 
reward for himself, of any gratitude from me, or of any ap- 
preciation by the public at large, but solely because he 
deemed such action necessary for the well-being of the 
country as a whole. 

My experience with Senator Quay was similar. I had 
no personal relations with him before I was President, and 
knew nothing of him save by hearsay. Soon after I became 
President, Senator Quay called upon me, told me he had 
known me very slightly, that he thought most men who 
claimed to be reformers were hypocrites, but that he deemed 
me sincere, that he thought conditions had become such that 
aggressive courage and honesty were necessary In order to 
remedy them, that he believed I Intended to be a good and 
efficient President, and that to the best of his ability he 
would support me in making my Administration a success. 



APPLIED IDEALISM 171 

He kept his word with absolute good faith. He had been 
in the Civil War, and was a medal of honor man ; and I 
think my having been in the Spanish War gave him at the 
outset a kindly feeling toward me. He was also a very well- 
read man — - I owe to him, for instance, my acquaintance 
with the writings of the Finnish novelist Topelius. Not 
only did he support me on almost every public question in 
which I was most interested — • including, I am convinced, 
every one on which he fe't he conscientiously could do so — 
but he also at the time of his death gave a striking proof of 
his disinterested desire to render a service to certain poor 
people, and this under conditions in which not only would 
he never know if the service were rendered but in which he 
had no reason to expect that his part in it would ever be 
made known to any other man. 

Quay was descended from a French voyageur who had 
some Indian blood in him. He was proud of this Indian 
blood, took an especial interest in Indians, and whenever 
Indians came to Washington they always called on him. 
Once during my Administration a delegation of Iroquois 
came over from Canada to call on me at the White House. 
Their visit had in it something that was pathetic as well as 
amusing. They represented the descendants of the Six 
Nations, who fled to Canada after Sullivan harried their 
towns in the Revolutionary War. Now, a century and a 
quarter later, their people thought that they would like to 
come back into the United States ; and these representatives 
had called upon me with the dim hope that perhaps I could 
give their tribes land on which they could settle. As soon 
as they reached Washington they asked Quay to bring them 
to call on me, which he did, telling me that of course their 
errand was hopeless and that he had explained as much to 
them, but that they would like me to extend the courtesy of an 
interview. At the close of the interview, which had been con- 
ducted with all the solemnities of calumet and wampum, the 
Indians filed out. Quay, before following them, turned to 
me with his usual emotionless face and said, "Good-by, Mr. 
President ; this reminds one of the Flight of a Tartar Tribe, 
doesn't it f" I answered, "So you're fond of De Quincey, 



172 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

Senator?" to which Quay responded, "Yes; always liked 
De Quincey ; good-by." And away he went with the 
tribesmen, who seemed to have walked out of a remote'past. 

Quay had become particularly concerned about the Dela- 
wares in the Indian Territory. He felt that the Interior 
Department did not do them justice. He also felt that his 
colleagues of the Senate took no interest in them. When in 
the spring of 1904 he lay in his house mortally sick, he sent 
me word that he had something important to say to me, and 
would have himself carried round to see me, I sent back 
word not to think of doing so, and that on my way back from 
church next Sunday I would stop in and call on him. This I 
accordingly did. He was lying in his bed, death written on 
his face. He thanked me for coming, and then explained 
that, as he was on the point of death and knew he would 
never return to Washington — it was late spring and he was 
about to leave — he wished to see me to get my personal 
promise that, after he died, I would myself look after the 
interests of the Delaware Indians. He added that he did 
not trust the Interior Department — although he knew 
that I did not share his views on this point — and that still 
less did he believe that any of his colleagues in the Senate 
would exert themselves in the interests of the Delawares, 
and that therefore he wished my personal assurance that I 
would personally see that no injustice was done them. I 
told him I would do so, and then added, in rather perfunc- 
tory fashion, that he must not take such a gloomy view of 
himself, that when he got away for the summer I hoped he 
would recover and be back all right when Congress opened. 
A gleam came into the old fighter's eyes and he answered : 
"No, I am dying, and you know it. I don't mind dying; 
but I do wish it were possible for me to get off into the great 
north woods and crawl out on a rock in the sun and die like 
a wolf!" 

I never saw him again. When he died I sent a telegram 
of sympathy to his wife. A paper which constantly preached 
reform, and which kept up its circulation by the no less con- 
stant practice of slander, a paper which in theory condemned 
all public men who violated the eighth commandment, and in 



APPLIED IDEALISM 



173 



practice subsisted by incessant violation of the ninth, assailed 
me for sending my message to the dead man's wife. I knew 
the editors of this paper, and the editor who was their pred- 
ecessor. They had led lives of bodily ease and the avoid- 
ance of bodily risk; they earned their livelihood by the 
practice of mendacity for profit ; and they delivered malig- 




Matthew Stanley Quay. 

" In his youth he freely risked his life for a great ideal, and when death was already clutch- 
ing his breast he spent almost his last breath in serving humble and friendless people 
whom he had served with disinterested loyalty." 

nant judgment on a dead man who, whatever his faults, 
had in his youth freely risked his life for a great ideal, and 
who when death was already clutching his breast had spent 
almost his last breath on behalf of humble and friendless 
people whom he had served with disinterested loyalty. 

There is no greater duty than to war on the corrupt and 
unprincipled boss, and on the corrupt and unprincipled 
business man ; and for the matter of that, on the corrupt 



174 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

and unprincipled labor leader also, and on the corrupt 
and unprincipled editor, and on any one else who is 
corrupt and unprincipled. But where the conditions are 
such, whether in politics or in business, that the great 
majority of men have behaved in a way which is gradually 
seen to be improper, but which at one time did not conflict 
with the generally accepted morality, then the warfare on 
the system should not include warfare on the men them- 
selves, unless they decline to amend their ways and to dis- 
sociate themselves from the system. There are many good, 
unimaginative citizens who in politics or in business act in 
accordance with accepted standards, in a matter-of-course 
way, without questioning these standards ; until something 
happens which sharply arouses them to the situation, where- 
upon they try to work for better things. The proper course 
in such event is to let bygones be bygones, and if the men 
prove by their actions the sincerity of their conversion, 
heartily to work with them for the betterment of business 
and political conditions. 

By the time that I was ending my career as Civil Service 
Commissioner I was already growing to understand that 
mere improvement in political conditions by itself was not* 
enough. I dimly realized that an even greater fight must 
be waged to improve economic conditions, and to secure 
social and industrial justice, justice as between individuals 
and justice as between classes. I began to see that political 
effort was largely valuable as it found expression and re- 
sulted in such social and industrial betterment. I was 
gradually puzzling out, or trying to puzzle out, the answers 
to various questions — some as yet unsolvable to any of us, 
but for the solution of which it is the bounden duty of all of 
us to work. I had grown to realize very keenly that the 
duty of the Government to protect women and children must 
be extended to include the protection of all the crushable 
elements of labor. I saw that it was the affair of all our 
people to see that justice obtained between the big corpora- 
tion and its employees, and between the big corporation and 
its smaller rivals, as well as its customers and the general 
public. I saw that it was the affair of all of us, and not only 



APPLIED IDEALISM 175 

of the employer, if dividends went up and wages went down ; 
that it was to the interest of all of us that a full share of the 
benefit of improved machinery should go to the workman 
who used the machinery ; and also that it was to the interest 
of all of us that each man, whether brain worker or hand 
worker, should do the best work of which he was capable, 
and that there should be some correspondence between the 
value of the work and the value of the reward. It is these 
and many similar questions which in their sum make up the 
great social and industrial problems of to-day, the most in- 
teresting and important of the problems with which our 
public life must deal. 

In handling these problems I believe that much can be 
done by the Government. Furthermore, I believe that, 
after all that the Government can do has been done, there 
will remain as the most vital of all factors the individual 
character of the average man and the average woman. No 
governmental action can do more than supplement individ- 
ual action. Moreover, there must be collective action of 
kinds distinct from governmental action. A body of public 
opinion must be formed, must make itself felt, and in the 
end transform, and be transformed by, the gradual raising of 
individual standards of conduct. 

It is curious to see how difficult it is to make some men 
understand that insistence upon one factor does not and 
must not mean failure fully to recognize other factors. The 
selfish individual needs to be taught that we must now 
shackle cunning by law exactly as a few centuries back we 
shackled force by law. Unrestricted individualism spells 
ruin to the individual himself. But so does the elimination 
of individualism, whether by law or custom. It is a capital 
error to fail to recognize the vital need of good laws. It is 
also a capital error to believe that good laws will accomplish 
anything unless the average man has the right stufi^ in him. 
The toiler, the manual laborer, has received less than jus- 
tice, and he must be protected, both by law, by custom, and 
by the exercise of his right to increase his wage ; and yet 
to decrease the quantity and quality of his work will work 
only evil. There must be a far greater meed of respect and 



176 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

reward for the hand worker than we now give him, if our 
society is to be put on a sound basis ; and this respect and 
reward cannot be given him unless he is as ambitious to do 
the best possible work as is the highest type of brain worker, 
whether doctor or writer or artist. There must be a raising 
of standards, and not a leveling down to the standard of the 
poorest and most inefficient. There is urgent need of in- 
telligent governmental action to assist in making the life 
of the man who tills the soil all that it should be, and to see 
that the manual worker gets his full share of the reward for 
what he helps produce ; but if either farmer, mechanic, or 
day laborer is shiftless or lazy, if he shirks downright hard 
work, if he is stupid or self-indulgent, then no law can save 
him, and he must give way to a better type. 

I suppose that some good people will misunderstand what 
I say, and will insist on taking only half of it as representing 
the whole. Let me repeat. When I say, that, even after 
we have all the good laws necessary, the chief factor in any 
given man's success or failure must be that man's own char- 
acter, it must not be inferred that I am in the least minimiz- 
ing the importance of these laws, the real and vital need for 
them. The struggle for individual advancement and de- 
velopment can be brought to naught, or indefinitely re- 
tarded, by the absence of law or by bad law. It can be im- 
measurably aided by organized effort on the part of the 
State. Collective action and individual action, public 
law and private character, are both necessary. It is only 
by a slow and patient inward transformation such as these 
laws aid in bringing about that men are really helped up- 
ward in their struggle for a higher and a fuller life. Recog- 
nition of individual character as the most important of all 
factors does not mean failure fully to recognize that we 
must have good laws, and that we must have our best men 
In office to enforce these laws. The Nation collectively will 
in this way be able to be of real and genuine service to each 
of us individually ; and, on the other hand, the wisdom of 
the collective action will mainly depend on the high individ- 
ual average of citizenship. 

The relationship of man and woman Is the fundamental 



APPLIED IDEALISM 177 

relationship that stands at the base of the whole social struc- 
ture. Much can be done by law towards putting women on 
a footing of complete and entire equal rights with man — 
including the right to vote, the right to hold and use property, 
and the right to enter any profession she desires on the same 
terms as the man. Yet when this has been done it will 
amount to little unless on the one hand the man himself 
realizes his duty to the woman, and unless on the other 
hand the woman realizes that she has no claim to rights 
unless she performs the duties that go with those rights and 
that alone justify her in appealing to them. A cruel, selfish, 
or licentious man is an abhorrent member of the commu- 
nity ; but, after all, his actions are no worse in the long run 
than those of the woman who is content to be a parasite on 
others, who is cold, selfish, caring for nothing but frivolous 
pleasure and ignoble ease. The law of worthy effort, the 
law of service for a worthy end, without regard to whether 
it brings pleasure or pain, is the only right law of life, whether 
for man or for woman. The man must not be selfish ; nor, 
if the woman is wise, will she let the man grow selfish, and 
this not only for her own sake but for his. One of the 
prime needs is to remember that almost every duty is com- 
posed of two seemingly conflicting elements, and that over- 
insistence on one, to the exclusion of the other, may defeat 
its own end. Any man who studies the statistics of the 
birth-rate among the native Americans of New England, or 
among the native French of France, needs not to be told 
that when prudence and forethought are carried to the point 
of cold selfishness and self-indulgence, the race is bound to 
disappear. Taking into account the women who for good 
reasons do not marry, or who when married are childless or 
are able to have but one or two children, it is evident that 
the married woman able to have children must on an average 
have four or the race will not perpetuate itself. This is the 
mere statement of a self-evident truth. Yet foolish and 
self-indulgent people often resent this statement as if it 
were in some way possible by denunciation to reverse the 
facts of nature ; and, on the other hand, improvident and 
shiftless people, inconsiderate and brutal people, treat the 



178 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

statement as if it justified heads of families in having enor- 
mous numbers of badly nourished, badly brought up, and 
badly cared for children for whom they make no effort to 
provide. A man must think well before he marries. He 
must be a tender and considerate husband and realize that 
there is no other human being to whom he owes so much of 
love and regard and consideration as he does to the woman 
who with pain bears and with labor rears the children that 
are his. No words can paint the scorn and contempt which 
must be felt by all right-thinking men, not only for the 
brutal husband, but for the husband who fails to show full 
loyalty and consideration to his wife. Moreover, he must 
work, he must do his part in the world. On the other hand, 
the woman must realize that she has no more right to shirk 
the business of wifehood and motherhood than the man has 
to shirk his business as breadwinner for the household. 
Women should have free access to every field of labor which 
they care to enter, and when their work is as valuable as 
that of a man it should be paid as highly. Yet normally for 
the man and the woman whose welfare is more important 
than the welfare of any other human beings, the woman 
must remain the housemother, the homekeeper, and the man 
must remain the breadwinner, the provider for the wife 
who bears his children and for the children she brings into 
the world. No other work is as valuable or as exacting for 
either man or woman ; it must always, in every healthy 
society, be for both man and woman the prime work, _^the 
most important work ; normally all other work is of second- 
ary importance, and must come as an addition to, not a 
substitute for, this primary work. The partnership should 
be one of equal rights, one of love, of self-respect and unself- 
ishness, above all a partnership for the performance of the 
most vitally important of all duties. The performance of 
duty, and not an indulgence in vapid ease and vapid pleasure, 
is all that makes life worth while. 

Suffrage for women should be looked on from this stand- 
point. Personally I feel that it is exactly as much a "right" 
of women as of men to vote. But the important point 
with both men and women is to treat the exercise of the 



Jwi': Addam^ 




CopyrlKht by Falk. 

Mary Antin. 




" I always favored Woman's 
Suflfrage, but only tepidly, 
until my association with 
women like Jane Addanis 
and f'rances Kellor, who 
desired it as one means of 
enabling them to render 
better and more efficient 
service, changed me into a 
zealous instead of a luke- 
warm adherent of the cause, 
in spite of the fact that a 
few of the best women of 
the same type, women like 
Mary Antin, did not favor 
the movement." 



I'RANTKS Kl'.LLOK. 



i8o THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

suffrage as a duty, which, in the long run, must be well per- 
formed to be of the slightest value. I always favored 
woman's suffrage, but only tepidly, until my association 
, with women like Jane Addams and Frances Kellor, who 
/ desired it as one means of enabling them to render better and 
' more efficient service, changed me into a zealous instead of 
a lukewarm adherent of the cause — in spite of the fact that a 
few of the best women of the same type, women like Mary 
Antin, did not favor the movement. A vote is like a rifle : 
its usefulness depends upon the character of the user. The 
mere possession of the vote will no mqre benefit men and 
women not sufficiently developed to us^e it than the posses- 
sion of rifles will turn untrained Egyptian fellaheen into sol- 
diers. This is as true of woman as of man — and no more 
true. Universal suffrage in Hayti has not made the Haytians 
able to govern themselves in any true sense ; and woman 
suffrage in Utah in no shape or way affected the problem of 
polygamy. I believe in suffrage for women in America, be- 
cause I think they are fit for it. I believe for women, as for 
men, more in the duty of fitting one's self to do well and 
wisely with the ballot than in the naked right to cast the ballot. 
I wish that people would read books like the novels and 
stories, at once strong and charming, of Henry Bordeaux, 
books like Kathleen Norris's "Mother," and Cornelia 
Comer's "Preliminaries," and would use these, and other 
such books, as tracts, now and then ! Perhaps the following 
correspondence will give a better idea than I can otherwise 
give of the problems that in everyday life come before men 
and women, and of the need that the man shall show him- 
self unselfish and considerate, and do his full share of the 
joint duty : 

January 3, 1913. 
Colonel Theodore Roosevelt: 

Dear Sir — I suppose you are willing to stand sponsor 
for the assertion that the women of the country are not doing 
their duty unless they have large families. I wonder if 
you know the real reason, after all. Society and clubs are 
held largely to blame, but society really takes in so few 



APPLIED IDEALISM i8i 

people, after alL I thought, when I got married at twenty, 
that it was the proper thing to have a family, and, as we 
had very little of this world's goods, also thought it the 
thing to do all the necessary work for them. I have had 
nine children, did all my own work, including washing, iron- 
ing, house-cleaning, and the care of the little ones as they 
came along, which was about every two years ; also sewed 
everything they wore, including trousers for the boys and 
caps and jackets for the girls while little. I also helped 
them all in their school work, and started them in music, etc. 
But as they grew older I got behind the times. I never be- 
longed to a club or a society or lodge, nor went to any one's 
house scarcely; there wasn't time. In consequence, I knew 
nothing that was going on in the town, much less the events 
of the country, and at the same time my husband kept 
growing in wisdom and knowledge, from mixing with men 
and hearing topics of the times discussed. At the beginning 
of our married life I had just as quick a mind to grasp things 
as he did, and had more school education, having graduated 
from a three years' high school. My husband more and 
more declined to discuss things with me; as he said, "I 
didn't know anything about it." When I'd ask, he'd say, 
"Oh, you wouldn't understand if I'd tell you." So here I 
am, at forty-five years, hopelessly dull and uninteresting, 
while he can mix with the brightest minds in the country as 
an equal. He's a strong Progressive man, took very active 
part in the late campaign, etc. I am also Progressive, and 
tried my best, after so many years of shut-in life, to grasp 
the ideas you stood for, and read everything I could find 
during the summer and fall. But I've been out of touch 
with people too long now, and my husband would much 
rather go and talk to some woman who hasn't had any 
children, because she knows things (I am not specifying any 
particular woman). I simply bore him to death because 
I'm not interesting. Now, tell me, how was it my fault t 
I was only doing what I thought was my duty. No woman 
can keep up with things who never talks with any one but 
young children. As soon as my children grew up they took 
the same attitude as their father, and frequently say, "Oh, 



1 82 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

mother doesn't know." They look up to and admire their 
father because he's a man of the world and knows how to act 
when he goes out. How can I urge my daughters now to go 
and raise large families ^ It means by the time you have 
lost your figure and charm for them they are all ashamed of 
you. Now, as a believer in woman's rights, do a little talk- 
ing to the men as to their duties to their wives, or else refrain 
from urging us women to have children, I am only one of 
thousands of middle-class respectable women who give their 
lives to raise a nice family, and then who become bitter from 
the injustice done us. Don't let this go into the waste- 
basket, but think it over. Yours respectfully, ■. 

New York, January ii, 1913. 
My Dear Mrs. ; 

Most certainly your letter will not go into the waste-paper 
basket. I shall think it over and show it to Mrs. Roosevelt. 
Will you let me say, in the first place, that a woman who can 
write such a letter is certainly not "hopelessly dull and un- 
interesting" ! If the facts are as you state, then I do not 
wonder that you feel bitterly and that you feel that the 
gravest kind of injustice has been done you. I have always 
tried to insist to men that they should do their duty to the 
women even more than the women to them. Now I hardly 
like to write specifically about your husband, because you 
might not like it yourself. It seems to me almost incredible 
that any man who is the husband of a woman who has borne 
him nine children should not feel that they and he are 
lastingly her debtors. You say that you have had nine 
children, that you did all your own work, including washing, 
ironing, house-cleaning, and the care of the little ones as 
they came along ; that you sewed everything they wore, 
including trousers for the boys and caps and jackets for the 
girls while little ; that you helped' them all in their school 
work and started them in music ; but that as they grew 
older you got behind the times, that you never belonged to a 
club or society or lodge, nor went to any one's house, as you 
hardly had time to do so ; and that in consequence your 
husband outgrew you, and that your children look up to 



APPLIED IDEALISM 183 

him and not to you and feel that they have outgrown you. 
If these facts are so, you have done a great and wonderful 
work, and the only explanation I can possibly give of the 
attitude you describe on the part of your husband and chil- 
dren is that they do not understand what it is that you have 
done. I emphatically believe in unselfishness, but I also be- 
lieve that it is a mistake to let other people grow selfish, 
even when the other people are husband and children. 

Now, I suggest that you take your letter to me, of which I 
send you back a copy, and this letter, and then select out of 
your family the one with whom you feel most sympathy, 
whether it is your husband or one of your children. Show 
the two letters to him or her, and then have a frank talk about 
the matter. If any man, as you say, becomes ashamed of his 
wife because she has lost her figure in bearing his children, 
then that man is a hound and has every cause to be ashamed 
of himself. I am sending you a little book called "Mother," 
by Kathleen Norris, which will give you my views on the 
matter. Of course there are base and selfish men, just as 
there are, although I believe in smaller number, base and 
selfish women. Man and woman alike should profit by the 
teachings in such a story as this of "Mother." 
Sincerely yours, 

Theodore Roosevelt. 

January 21, 1913. 
Colonel Theodore Roosevelt: 

My dear Sir — Your letter came as a surprise, for I wasn't 
expecting an answer. The next day the book came, and I 
thank you for your ready sympathy and understanding. I 
feel as though you and Mrs. Roosevxlt would think I was 
hardly loyal to my husband and children ; but knowing of no 
other way to bring the idea which was so strong in my mind 
to your notice, I told my personal story. If it will, in a small 
measure, be the means of helping some one else by molding 
public opinion, through you, I shall be content. You have 
helped me more than you know. Just having you interested 
is as good as a tonic, and braces me up till I feel as though I 
shall refuse to be "laid on the shelf." ... To think that 



i84 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

you'd bother to send me a book. I shall always treasure it 
both for the text of the book and the sender. I read it with 
absorbing interest. The mother was so splendid. She was 
ideal. The situations are so startlingly real, just like what 
happens here every day with variations. . 

A narrative of facts is often more convincing than a 
homily; and these two letters of my correspondent carry 
their own lesson. 

Parenthetically, let me remark that whenever a man 
thinks that he has outgrown the woman who is his mate, he 
will do well carefully to consider whether his growth has not 
been downward instead of upward, whether the facts are not 
merely that he has fallen away from his wife's standard of 
refinement and of duty. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE NEW YORK POLICE 

IN the spring of 1895 I was appointed by Mayor Strong 
Police Commissioner, and I served as President of 
the Police Commission of New York for the two fol- 
lowing years. Mayor Strong had been elected Mayor 
the preceding fall, when the general anti-Democratic wave 
of that year coincided with one of the city's occasional insur- 
rections of virtue and consequent turning out of Tammany 
from municipal control. He had been elected on a non- 
partisan ticket — usually (although not always) the right 
kind of ticket in municipal affairs, provided it represents not 
a bargain among factions but genuine non-partisanship 
with the genuine purpose to get the right men in control 
of the city government on a platform which deals with the 
needs of the average men and women, the men and women 
who work hard and who too often live hard. I was ap- 
pointed with the distinct understanding that I was to admin- 
ister the Police Department with entire disregard of partisan 
politics, and only from the standpoint of a good citizen 
interested in promoting the welfare of all good citizens. 
My task, therefore, was really simple. Mayor Strong had 
already offered me the Street-Cleaning Department. For 
this work I did not feel that I had any especial fitness. I 
resolutely refused to accept the position, and the Mayor 
ultimately got a far better man for his purpose in Colonel 
George F. Waring. The work of the Police Department, 
however, was in my line, and I was glad to undertake it. 
The man who was closest to me throughout my two 
years in the Police Department was Jacob Riis. By this 
time, as I have said, I was getting our social, industrial, 
and political needs into pretty fair perspective. I was 

i8s 



i86 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

still ignorant of the extent to which big men of great wealth 
played a mischievous part in our industrial and social life, 




Jacob A. Riis. 

"He and I looked at life and its problems from substantially the same standpoint. Our j 
ideals and principles and purposes, and our beliefs as to the methods necessary to j 
realize them, were alike." 

but I was well awake to the need of making ours in good faith 
both an economic and an industrial as well as a political 
democracy. I already knew Jake Riis, because his book I 



THE NEW YORK POLICE 187 

"How the Other Half Lives" had been to me both an enHght- 
enment and an inspiration for which I felt I could never be 
too grateful. Soon after it was written I had called at his 
office to tell him how deeply impressed I was by the book, 
and that I wished to help him in any practical way to try 
to make things a little better. I have always had a horror 
of words that are not translated into deeds, of speech that 
does not result in action — in other words, I believe in real- 
izable ideals and in realizing them, in preaching what can 
be practiced and then in practicing it. Jacob Riis had 
drawn an indictment of the things that were wrong, pitifully 
and dreadfully wrong, with the tenement homes and the 
tenement lives of our wage-workers. In his book he had 
pointed out how the city government, and especially those 
connected with the departments of police and health, could 
aid in remedying some of the wrongs. 

As President of the Police Board I was also a member 
of the Health Board. In both positions I felt that with 
Jacob Riis's guidance I would be able to put a goodly num- 
ber of his principles into actual effect. He and I looked at 
life and its problems from substantially the same standpoint. 
Our ideals and principles and purposes, and our beliefs 
as to the methods necessary to realize them, were alike. 
After the election in 1894 I had written him a letter which 
ran in part as follows : 

It is very important to the city to have a business man's 
Mayor, but it is more important to have a workingman's 
Mayor ; and I want Mr. Strong to be that also. . . . It is an 
excellent thing to have rapid transit, but it is a good deal 
more important, if you look at matters with a proper per- 
spective, to have ample playgrounds in the poorer quarters 
of the city, and to take the children ofT the streets so as to 
prevent them growing up toughs. In the same way it is an 
admirable thing to have clean streets ; indeed, it is an essen- 
tial thing to have them ; but it would be a better thing to 
have our schools large enough to give ample accommoda- 
tion to all who should be pupils and to provide them with 
proper playgrounds. 



1 88 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

And I added, while expressing my regret that I had not 
been able to accept the street-cleaning commissionership, 
that "I would have been delighted to smash up the corrupt 
contractors and put the street-cleaning force absolutely 
out of the domain of politics." 

This was nineteen years ago, but it makes a pretty good 
platform in municipal politics even to-day — smash corrup- 
tion, take the municipal service out of the domain of poli- 
tics, insist upon having a Mayor who shall be a working- 
man's Mayor even more than a business man's Mayor, 
and devote all the attention possible to the welfare of the 
children. 

Therefore, as I viewed it, there were two sides to the work : 
first, the actual handling of the Police Department; second, 
using my position to help in making the city a better place 
in which to live and work for those to whom the conditions 
of life and labor were hardest. The two problems were 
closely connected ; for one thing never to be forgotten in 
striving to better the conditions of the New York police 
force is the connection between the standard of morals and 
behavior in that force and the general standard of morals 
and behavior in the city at large. The form of government 
of the Police Department at that time was such as to make 
it a matter of extreme difficulty to get good results. It 
represented that device of old-school American political 
thought, the desire to establish checks and balances so elab- 
orate that no man shall have power enough to do anything 
very bad. In practice this always means that no man has 
power enough to do anything good, and that what is bad 
is done anyhow. 

In most positions the "division of powers" theory works 
unmitigated mischief. The only way to get good service 
is to give somebody power to render it, facing the fact that 
power which will enable a man to do a job well will also 
necessarily enable him to do it ill if he is the wrong kind of 
man. What is normally needed is the concentration in the 
hands of one man, or of a very small body of men, of ample 
power to enable him or them to do the work that is necessary ; 
and then the devising of means to hold these men fully 



THE NEW YORK POLICE 189 

responsible for the exercise of that power by the people. 
This of course means that, if the people are willing to see 
power misused, it will be misused. But it also means that 
if, as we hold, the people are fit for self-government — if, 
in other words, our talk and our institutions are not shams 
— we will get good government. I do not contend that my 
theory will automatically bring good government. I do 
contend that it will enable us to get as good government 
as we deserve, and that the other way will not. 

The then government of the Police Department was so 
devised as to render it most difficult to accomplish anything 
good, while the field for intrigue and conspiracy was limitless. 
There were four Commissioners, two supposed to belong 
to one party and two to the other, although, as a matter of 
fact, they never divided on party lines. There was a Chief, 
appointed by the Commissioners, but whom they could not 
remove without a regular trial subject to review by the 
courts of law. This Chief and any one Commissioner had 
power to hold up most of the acts of the other three Com- 
missioners. It was made easy for the four Commissioners 
to come to a deadlock among themselves ; and if this danger 
was avoided, it was easy for one Commissioner, by intrigu- 
ing with the Chief, to bring the other three to a standstill. 
The Commissioners were appointed by the Mayor, but he 
could not remove them without the assent of the Governor, 
who was usually politically opposed to him. In the same 
way the Commissioners could appoint the patrolmen, but 
they could not remove them, save after a trial which went 
up for review to the courts. 

As was inevitable under our system of law procedure, 
this meant that the action of the court was apt to be deter- 
mined by legal technicalities. It was possible to dismiss a 
man from the service for quite insufficient reasons, and to 
provide against the reversal of the sentence, if the techni- 
calities of procedure were observed. But the worst criminals 
were apt to be adroit men, against whom it was impossible 
to get legal evidence which a court could properly consider 
in a criminal trial (and the mood of the court might be to 
treat the case as if it were a criminal trial), although it was 



I90 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

easy to get evidence which would render it not merely justi- 
fiable but necessary for a man to remove them from his 
private employ — and surely the public should be as well 
treated as a private employer. Accordingly, most of the 
worst men put out were reinstated by the courts ; and when 
the Mayor attempted to remove one of my colleagues who 
made it his business to try to nullify the work done by the 
rest of us, the Governor sided with the recalcitrant Com- 
missioner and refused to permit his removal. 

Nevertheless, an astounding quantity of work was done 
in reforming the force. We had a good deal of power, 
anyhow; we exercised it to the full; and we accomplished 
some things by assuming the appearance of a power which 
we did not really possess. 

The first fight I made was to keep politics absolutely 
out of the force ; and not only politics, but every kind of 
improper favoritism. Doubtless in making thousands of 
appointments and hundreds of promotions there were men 
who contrived to use influence of which I was ignorant. 
But these cases must have been few and far between. As 
far as was humanly possible, the appointments and promo- 
tions were made without regard to any question except the 
fitness of the man and the needs of the service. As Civil 
Service Commissioner I had been instructing heads of 
departments and bureaus how to get men appointed without 
regard to politics, and assuring them that by following our 
methods they would obtain first-class results. As Police 
Commissioner I was able practically to apply my own teach- 
ings. 

The appointments to the police force were made as I have 
described in the last chapter. We paid not the slightest 
attention to a man's politics or creed, or where he was born, 
so long as he was an American citizen; and on an average 
we obtained far and away the best men that had ever come 
into the Police Department. It was of course very difficult 
at first to convince both the politicians and the people that 
we really meant what we said, and that every one really 
would have a fair trial. There had been in previous years 
the most widespread and gross corruption in connection 



THE NEW YORK POLICE 191 

with every activity In the Police Department, and there 
had been a regular tariff for appointments and promotions. 
Many powerful politicians and many corrupt outsiders 
believed that in some way or other it would still be possible 
to secure appointments by corrupt and improper methods, 
and many good citizens felt the same conviction. I endeav- 
ored to remove the impression from the minds of both sets of 
people by giving the widest publicity to what we were doing 
and how we were doing it, by making the whole process 
open and aboveboard, and by making it evident that we 
would probe to the bottom every charge of corruption. 

For instance, I received visits at one time from a Catholic 
priest, and at another time from a Methodist clergyman, 
who had parishoners who wished to enter the police force, 
but who did not believe they could get in save by the pay- 
ment of money or through political pressure. The priest 
was running a temperance lyceum in connection with his 
church, and he wished to know if there would be a chance 
for some of the young men who belonged to that lyceum. 
The Methodist clergyman came from a little patch of old 
native America which by a recent extension had been taken 
within the limits of the huge, polyglot, pleasure-loving city. 
His was a small church, most of the members being ship- 
wrights, mechanics, and sailormen from the local coasters. 
In each case I assured my visitor that we wanted on the force 
men of the exact type which he said he could furnish. I 
also told him that I was as anxious as he was to find out if 
there was any improper work being done in connection with 
the examinations, and that I would like him to get four or 
five of his men to take the examinations without letting me 
know their names. Then, whether the men failed or suc- 
ceeded, he and I would take their papers and follow them 
through every stage so that we could tell at once whether 
they had been either improperly favored or improperly 
discriminated against. This was accordingly done, and in 
each case my visitor turned up a few weeks later, his face 
wreathed in smiles, to say that his candidates had passed 
and that everything was evidently all straight. During 
my two years as President of the Commission I think I 



192 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



appointed a dozen or fifteen members of that little Methodist 
congregation, and certainly twice that number of men from 
the temperance lyceum of the Catholic church in question. 
They were all men of the very type I most wished to see 

on the force — men 
of strong physique 
and resolute temper, 
sober, self-respect- 
ing, self-reliant, with 
a strong wish to im- 
prove themselves. 

Occasionally I 
would myself pick 
out a man and tell 
him to take the ex- 
amination. Thus 
one evening I went 
down to speak in 
the Bowery at the 
Young Men's Insti- 
tute, a branch of the 
Young Men's Chris- 
tian Association, at 
the request of Mr. 
Cleveland H. Dodge. 
While there he told 
me he wished to show 
me a young Jew who 
had recently, by an 
exhibition of marked 
pluck and bodily 
prowess, saved some 
women and children 
f rom a burningbuild- 
ing. The young Jew, whose name was Otto Raphael, was 
brought up to see me ; a powerful fellow, with good-humored, 
intelligent face. I asked him about his education, and told him 
to try the examination. He did, passed, was appointed, and 
made an admirable officer ; and he and all his family, wherever 




Orxo Raphael. 

A young Jew who had recently, by an exhibition of 
marked pluck and bodily prowess, saved some women 
and children from a burning building." 



THE NEW YORK POLICE 193 

they may dwell, have been close friends of mine ever since. 
Otto Raphael was a genuine East Sider. He and I were 
both "straight New York," to use the vernacular of our 
native city. To show our community of feeling and our 
grasp of the facts of life, I may mention that we were almost 
the only men in the Police Department who picked Fitz- 
simmons as a winner against Corbett. Otto's parents had 
come over from Russia, and not only in social standing but 
in pay a policeman's position meant everything to him. 
It enabled Otto to educate his little brothers and sisters 
who had been born in this country, and to bring over from 
Russia two or three kinsfolk who had perforce been left 
behind. 

Rather curiously, it was by no means as easy to keep 
politics and corruption out of the promotions as out of the 
entrance examinations. This was because I could take 
complete charge of the entrance examinations myself; and, 
moreover, they were largely automatic. In promotions, 
on the other hand, the prime element was the record and 
capacity of the officer, and for this we had largely to rely 
upon the judgment of the man's immediate superiors. This 
doubtless meant that in certain cases that judgment was 
given for improper reasons. 

However, there were cases where I could act on personal 
knowledge. One thing that we did was to endeavor to recog- 
nize gallantry. We did not have to work a revolution in 
the force as to courage in the way that we had to work a 
revolution in honesty. They had always been brave in 
dealing with riotous and violent criminals. But they had 
gradually become very corrupt. Our great work, therefore, 
was the stamping out of dishonesty, and this work we did 
thoroughly, so far as the ridiculous bi-partisan law under 
which the Department was administered would permit. 
But we were anxious that, while stamping out what was 
evil in the force, we should keep and improve what was good. 
While warring on dishonesty, we made every effort to 
increase efficiency. It has unfortunately been shown by 
sad experience that at times a police organization which is 
free from the taint of corruption may yet show itself weak 



194 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

in some great crisis or unable to deal with the more dan- 
gerous kinds of criminals. This we were determined to 
prevent. 

Our efforts were crowned with entire success. The 
improvement in the efficiency of the force went hand in 
hand with the improvement in its honesty. The men in 
uniform and the men in plain clothes — the detectives — 
did better work than ever before. The aggregate of crimes 
where punishment followed the commission of the crime 
increased, while the aggregate of crimes where the criminal 
escaped punishment decreased. Every discredited poli- 
tician, every sensational newspaper, and every timid fool who 
could be scared by clamor was against us. All three classes 
strove by every means in their power to show that in making 
the force honest we had impaired its efficiency ; and by their 
utterances they tended to bring about the very condition of 
things against which they professed to protest. But we 
went steadily along the path we had marked out. The 
fight was hard, and there was plenty of worry and anxiety, 
but we won. I was appointed in May, 1895. ^^^ February, 
1897, three months before I resigned to become Assistant 
Secretary of the Navy, the Judge who charged the Grand 
Jury of New York County was able to congratulate them on 
the phenomenal decrease in crime, especially of the violent 
sort. This decrease was steady during the two years. The 
police, after the reform policy was thoroughly tried, proved 
more successful than ever before in protecting life and prop- 
erty and in putting down crime and criminal vice. 

The part played by the recognition and reward of actual 
personal prowess among the members of the police force in 
producing this state of affairs was appreciable, though there 
were many other factors that combined to bring about the 
betterment. The immense improvement in discipline by 
punishing all offenders without mercy, no matter how great 
their political or personal influence ; the resolute warfare 
against every kind of criminal who had hitherto been able 
corruptly to purchase protection ; the prompt recognition 
of ability even where it was entirely unconnected with per- 
sonal prowess — all these were elements which had enormous 



THE NEW YORK POLICE 195 

weight in producing the change. Mere courage and daring, 
and the rewarding of courage and daring, cannot supply 
the lack of discipline, of ability, of honesty. But they are 
of vital consequence, nevertheless. No police force is worth 
anything if its members are not intelligent and honest; 
but neither is it worth anything unless its members are brave, 
hardy, and well disciplined. 

We showed recognition of daring and of personal prowess 
in two ways : first, by awarding a medal or a certificate in 
remembrance of the deed ; and, second, by giving it weight 
in making any promotion, especially to the lower grades. 
In the higher grades — in all promotions above that of ser- 
geant, for instance — resolute and daring courage cannot 
normally be considered as a factor of determining weight 
in making promotions ; rather is it a quality the lack of which 
unfits a man for promotion. For in the higher places we 
must assume the existence of such a quality in any fit can- 
didate, and must make the promotion with a view to the 
man's energy, executive capacity, and power of command. 
In the lower grades, however, marked gallantry should 
always be taken into account in deciding among diff"erent 
candidates for any given place. 

During our two years' service we found it necessary over 
a hundred times to single out men for special mention because 
of some feat of heroism. The heroism usually took one of 
four forms : saving somebody from drowning, saving some- 
body from a burning building, stopping a runaway team, 
or arresting some violent lawbreaker under exceptional 
circumstances. To illustrate our method of action, I will 
take two of the first promotions made after I became Com- 
missioner. One case was that of an old fellow, a veteran 
of the Civil War, who was at the time a roundsman. I hap- 
pened to notice one day that he had saved a woman from 
drowning, and had him summoned so that I might look into 
the matter. The old fellow brought up his record before 
me, and showed not a little nervousness and agitation ; 
for it appeared that he had grown gray in the service, had 
performed feat after feat of heroism, but had no political 
backing of any account. No heed had ever been paid him. 



196 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

He was one of the quiet men who attend solely to duty, and 
although a Grand Army man, he had never sought to use 
influence of any kind. Now, at last, he thought there was 
a chance for him. He had been twenty-two years on the 
force, and during that time had saved some twenty-five per- 
sons from death by drowning, varying the performance two 
or three times by saving persons from burning buildings. 
Twice Congress had passed laws especially to empower the 
then Secretary of the Treasury, John Sherman, to give him 
a medal for distinguished gallantry in saving life. The 
Life-Saving Society had also given him its medal, and so had 
the Police Department. There was not a complaint in all 
his record against him for any infraction of duty, and he 
was sober and trustworthy. He was entitled to his pro- 
motion ; and he got it, there and then. It may be worth 
mentioning that he kept on saving life after he was given his 
sergeantcy. On October 21, 1896, he again rescued a man 
from drowning. It was at night, nobody else was in the 
neighborhood, and the dock from which he jumped was in 
absolute darkness, and he was ten minutes in the water, 
which was very cold. He was fifty-five years old when he 
saved this man. It was the twenty-ninth person whose life 
he had saved during his twenty-three years' service in the 
Department. 

The other man was a patrolman whom we promoted to 
roundsman for activity in catching a burglar under rather 
peculiar circumstances. I happened to note his getting a 
burglar one week. Apparently he had fallen into the habit, 
for he got another next week. In the latter case the burglar 
escaped from the house soon after midnight, and ran away 
toward Park Avenue, with the policeman in hot chase. 
The New York Central Railroad runs under Park Avenue, 
and there is a succession of openings in the top of the tunnel. 
Finding that the policeman was gaining on him, the burglar 
took a desperate chance and leaped down one of these 
openings, at the risk of breaking his neck. Now the burglar 
was running for his liberty, and it was the part of wisdom 
for him to imperil life or limb ; but the policeman was merely 
doing his duty, and nobody could have blamed him for not 



THE NEW YORK POLICE 197 

taking the jump. However, he jumped; and in this partic- 
ular case the hand of the Lord was heavy upon tlie unright- 
eous. The burglar had the breath knocked out of him, and 
the "cop" didn't. When his victim could walk, the officer 
trotted him around to the station-house ; and a week after 
I had the officer up and promoted him, for he was sober, 
trustworthy, and strictly attentive to duty. 

Now I think that any decent man of reasonable intelligence 
will agree that we were quite right in promoting men in 
cases like these, and quite right in excluding politics from 
promotions. Yet it was because of our consistently acting 
in this manner, resolutely warring on dishonesty and on that 
peculiar form of baseness which masquerades as "practical" 
politics, and steadily refusing to pay heed to any considera- 
tion except the good of the service and the city, and the 
merits of the men themselves, that we drew down upon our 
heads the bitter and malignant animosity of the bread- 
and-butter spoils politicians. They secured the repeal of 
the Civil Service Law by the State Legislature. They 
attempted and almost succeeded in the effort to legislate 
us out of office. They joined with the baser portion of the 
sensational press in every species of foul, indecent falsehood 
and slander as to what we were doing. They attempted 
to seduce or frighten us by every species of intrigue and 
cajolery, of promise of political reward and threat of political 
punishment. They failed in their purpose. I believe in 
political organizations, and I believe in practical politics. 
If a man is not practical, he is of no use anywhere. But 
when politicians treat practical politics as foul politics, and 
when they turn what ought to be a necessary and useful 
political organization into a machine run by professional 
spoilsmen of low morality in their own interest, then it is 
time to drive the politician from public life, and either to 
mend or destroy the machine, according as the necessity may 
determine. 

We promoted to roundsman a patrolman, with an already 
excellent record, for gallantry shown in a fray which resulted 
in the death of his antagonist. He was after a gang of 
toughs who had just waylaid, robbed, and beaten a man. 



198 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

They scattered and he pursued the ringleader. Running 
hard, he gained on his man, whereupon the latter suddenly 
turned and fired full in his face. The officer already had his 
revolver drawn, and the two shots rang out almost together. 
The policeman was within a fraction of death, for the bullet 
from his opponent's pistol went through his helmet and just 
broke the skin of his head. His own aim was truer, and the 
man he was after fell dead, shot through the heart. I 
may explain that I have not the slightest sympathy with any 
policy which tends to put the policeman at the mercy of a 
tough, or which deprives him of efficient weapons. While 
Police Commissioner we punished any brutality by the 
police with such immediate severity that all cases of brutality 
practically came to an end. No decent citizen had anything 
to fear from the police during the two years of my service. 
But we consistently encouraged the police to prove that the 
violent criminal who endeavored to molest them or to resist 
arrest, or to interfere with them in the discharge of their 
duty, was himself in grave jeopardy; and we had every 
"gang" broken up and the members punished with whatever 
severity was necessary. Of course where possible the officer 
merely crippled the criminal who was violent. 

One of the things that we did while in office was to train 
the men in the use of the pistol. A school of pistol practice 
was established, and the marksmanship of the force was won- 
derfully improved. The man in charge of the school was a 
roundsman. Petty, whom we promoted to sergeant. He 
was one of the champion revolver shots of the country, and 
could hit just about where he aimed. Twice he was forced 
to fire at criminals who resisted arrest, and in each case he 
hit his man in the arm or leg, simply stopping him without 
danger to his life. 

In May, 1896, a number of burglaries occurred far uptown, 
in the neighborhood of One Hundred and Fifty-sixth Street 
and Union Avenue. Two officers were sent out each night 
to patrol the streets in plain clothes. About two o clock 
on the morning of May 8 they caught a glimpse of two men 
loitering about a large corner house, and determined to make 
them explain their actions. In order to cut ofi^ their escape, 



THE NEW YORK POLICE 199 

one officer went down one street and one the other. The 
first officer, whose name was Ryan, found the two men at the 
gateway of the side entrance of the house, and hailed to 
know what they were doing. Without answering, they 
turned and ran toward Prospect Avenue, with Ryan in close 
pursuit. After running about one hundred feet, one of them 
turned and fired three shots at Ryan, but failed to hit him. 
The two then separated, and the man who had done the 
shooting escaped. The other man, whose name proved to 
be O'Connor, again took to his heels, with Ryan still after 
him ; they turned the corner and met the other officer, whose 
name was Reid, running as hard as he could toward the shoot- 
ing. When O'Connor saw himself cut off by Reid, he fired 
at his new foe, the bullet cutting Reid's overcoat on the left 
shoulder. Reid promptly fired in return, his bullet going 
into O'Connor's neck and causing him to turn a complete 
somersault. The two officers then cared for their prisoner 
until the ambulance arrived, when he was taken to the 
hospital and pronounced mortally wounded. His companion 
was afterward caught, and they turned out to be the very 
burglars for whom Reid and Ryan had been on the lookout. 
In December, 1896, one of our officers was shot. A row 
occurred in a restaurant, which ended in two young toughs 
drawing their revolvers and literally running amuck, shoot- 
ing two or three men. A policeman, attracted by the noise, 
ran up and seized one of them, whereupon the other shot 
him in the mouth, wounding him badly. Nevertheless, 
the officer kept his prisoner and carried him to the station- 
house. The tough who had done the shooting ran out and 
was seized by another officer. The tough fired at him, the 
bullet passing through the officer's overcoat, but he was 
promptly knocked down, disarmed, and brought to the 
station-house. In this case neither policeman used his 
revolver, and each brought in his man, although the latter 
was armed and resisted arrest, one of the officers taking in 
his prisoner after having been himself severely wounded. 
A lamentable feature of the case was that this same officer 
was a man who, though capable of great gallantry, was also 
given to shirking his work, and we were finally obliged to 



THE NEW YORK POLICE 201 

dismiss him from the force, after passing over two or three 
glaring misdeeds in view of his record for courage. 

We promoted another man on account of finding out 
accidentally that he had performed a notable feat, which he 
had forborne even to mention, so that his name never came 
on the roll of honor. Late at night, while patrolling a lonely 
part of his post, he came upon three young toughs who had 
turned highwaymen and were robbing a peddler. Lie ran 
in at once with his night-stick, whereupon the toughs showed 
fight, and one of them struck at him with a bludgeon, break- 
ing his left hand. The officer, however, made such good use 
of his night-stick that he knocked down two of his assailants, 
whereupon the third ran away, and he brought both of his 
prisoners to the station-house. Then he went round to the 
hospital, had his broken hand set in plaster, and actu- 
ally reported for duty at the next tour, without losing one 
hour. He was a quiet fellow, with a record free from com- 
plaints, and we made him roundsman. 

The mounted squad have, of course, many opportunities 
to distinguish themselves" in stopping runaways. In May, 
1895, a mounted policeman named Heyer succeeded in stop- 
ping a runaway at Kingsbridge under rather noteworthy 
circumstances. Two men were driving in a buggy, when the 
horse stumbled, and in recovering himself broke the head- 
stall, so that the bridle fell off. The horse was a spirited 
trotter, and at once ran away at full speed. Heyer saw the 
occurrence, and followed at a run. When he got alongside 
the runaway he seized him by the forelock, guided him dex- 
terously over the bridge, preventing him from running into 
the numerous wagons that were on the road, and finally 
forced him up a hill and into a wagon-shed. Three months 
later this same officer saved a man from drowning. 

The members of the bicycle squad, which was established 
shortly after we took office, soon grew to show not only 
extraordinary proficiency on the wheel, but extraordinary 
daring. They frequently stopped runaways, wheeling along- 
side of them, and grasping the horses while going at full 
speed ; and, what was even more remarkable, they man- 
aged not only to overtake but to jump into the vehicle 



202 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

and capture, on two or three different occasions, men who 
were guilty of reckless driving, and who fought violently 
in resisting arrest. They were picked men, being young 
and active, and any feat of daring which could be accom- 
plished on the wheel they were certain to accomplish. 

Three of the best riders of the bicycle squad, whose names 
and records happen to occur to me, were men of the three 
ethnic strains most strongly represented in the New York 
police force, being respectively of native American, German, 
and Irish parentage. 

The German was a man of enormous power, and he 
was able to stop each of the many runaways he tackled 
without losing his wheel. Choosing his time, he would get 
alongside the horse and seize the bit in his left. hand, keep- 
ing his right on the crossbar of the wheel. By degrees he 
then got the animal under control. He never failed to 
stop it, and he never lost his wheel. He also never failed 
to overtake any "scorcher," although many of these were 
professional riders who deliberately violated the law to see 
if they could not get away from him ; for the wheelmen 
soon get to know the officers whose beats they cross. 

The Yankee, though a tall, powerful man and a very good 
rider, scarcely came up to the German in either respect; 
he possessed exceptional ability, however, as well as excep- 
tional nerve and coolness, and he also won his promotion. 
He stopped about as many runaways ; but when the horse 
was really panic-stricken he usually had to turn his wheel 
loose, getting a firm grip on the horse's reins and then kick- 
ing his wheel so that it would fall out of the way of injury 
from the wagon. On one occasion he had a fight with a 
drunken and reckless driver who was urging to top speed 
a spirited horse. He first got hold of the horse, whereupon 
the driver lashed both him and the beast, and the animal, 
already mad with terror, could not be stopped. The 
officer had of course kicked away his wheel at the beginning, 
and after being dragged along for some distance he let go 
the beast and made a grab at the wagon. The driver hit 
him with his whip, but he managed to get in, and after a 
vigorous tussle overcame his man, and disposed of him by 



THE NEW YORK POLICE 203 

getting him down and sitting on him. This left his hands 
free for the reins. By degrees he got the horse under con- 
trol, and drove the wagon round to the station-house, still 
sitting on his victim. "I jounced up and down on him to 
keep him quiet when he turned ugly," he remarked to me 
parenthetically. Having disposed of the wagon, he took 
the man round to the court, and on the way the prisoner 
suddenly sprang on him and tried to throttle him. Con- 
vinced at last that patience had ceased to be a virtue, he 
quieted his assailant with a smash on the head that took all 
the fight out of him until he was brought before the judge 
and fined. Like the other "bicycle cops," this officer made 
a number of arrests of criminals, such as thieves, highway- 
men, and the like, in addition to his natural prey — scorch- 
ers, runaways, and reckless drivers. 

The third member of the trio, a tall, sinewy man with 
flaming red hair, which rather added to the terror he inspired 
in evil-doers, was usually stationed in a tough part of the 
city, where there was a tendency to crimes of violence, 
and incidentally an occasional desire to harass wheelmen. 
The officer was as good off his wheel as on it, and he speedily 
established perfect order on his beat, being always willing 
to "take chances" in getting his man. He was no respecter 
of persons, and when it became his duty to arrest a wealthy 
man for persistently refusing to have his carriage lamps 
lighted after nightfall, he brought him in with the same indif- 
ference that he displayed in arresting a street-corner tough 
who had thrown a brick at a wheelman. 

Occasionally a policeman would perform work which ordi- 
narily comes within the domain of the fireman. In No- 
vember, 1896, an officer who had previously saved a man from 
death by drowning added to his record by saving five persons 
from burning. He was at the time asleep, when he was 
aroused by a fire in a house a few doors away. Running 
over the roofs of the adjoining houses until he reached the 
burning building, he found that on the fourth floor the 
iiames had cut off all exit from an apartment in which there 
were four women, two of them over fifty, and one of the 
others with a six-months-old baby. The officer ran down 



204 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

to the adjoining house, broke open the door of the apart- 
ment on the same floor — the fourth — and crept out on 
the coping, less than three inches wide, that ran from one 
house to the other. Being a large and very powerful and 
active man, he managed to keep hold of the casing of the 
window with one hand, and with the other to reach to the 
window of the apartment where the women and child were. 
The firemen appeared, and stretched a net underneath. 
The crowd that was looking on suddenly became motion- 
less and silent. Then, one by one, he drew the women out 
of their window, and, holding them tight against the wall, 
passed them into the other window. The exertion in such 
an attitude was great, and he strained himself badly ; but he 
possessed a practical mind, and as soon as the women were 
saved he began a prompt investigation of the cause of the 
fire, and arrested two men whose carelessness, as was after- 
ward proved, caused it. 

Now and then a man, though a brave man, proved to be 
slack or stupid or vicious, and we could make nothing out 
of him ; but hardihood and courage were qualities upon 
which we insisted and which we rewarded. Whenever I 
see the police force attacked and vilified, I always remember 
my association with it. The cases I have given above are 
merely instances chosen almost at random among hundreds 
of others. Men such as those I have mentioned have the 
right stuff in them ! If they go wrong, the trouble is with 
the system, and therefore with us, the citizens, for permit- 
ting the system to go unchanged. The conditions of New 
York life are such as to make the police problem therein 
more difficult than in any other of the world's great capi- 
tals. I am often asked if policemen are honest. I believe 
that the great majority of them want to be honest and will 
be honest whenever they are given the chance. The New 
York police force is a body thoroughly representative of 
the great city itself. As I have said above, the predominant 
ethnic strains in it are, first, the men of Irish birth or parent- 
age, and, following these, the native Americans, usually 
from the country districts, and the men of German birth 
or parentage. There are also Jews, Scandinavians, Italians, 



THE NEW YORK POLICE 205 

Slavs, and men of other nationalities. All soon become 
welded into one body. They are physically a fine lot. 
Moreover, their instincts are right; they are game, they are 
alert and self-reliant, they prefer to act squarely if they are 
allowed so to act. All that they need is to be given the 
chance to prove themselves honest, brave, and self-respect- 
ing. 

The law at present Is much better than in our day, so 
far as governing the force is concerned. There is now a 
single Commissioner, and the Mayor has complete power 
over him. The Mayor, through his Commissioner, now 
has power to keep the police force on a good level of conduct 
if with resolution and common sense he insists on absolute 
honesty within the force and at the same time heartily 
supports it against the criminal classes. To weaken the 
force in its dealings with gangs and toughs and criminals 
generally Is as damaging as to permit dishonesty, and, 
moreover, works towards dishonesty. But while under 
the present law very much improvement can be worked, 
there is need of change of the law which will make the Police 
Commissioner a permanent, non-partisan official, holding 
office so long as he proves thoroughly fit for the job, com- 
pletely independent of the politicians and privileged Inter- 
ests, and with complete power over the force. This means 
that there must be the right law, and the right public opinon 
back of the law. 

The many-sided ethnic character of the force now and 
then gives rise to, or affords opportunity for, queer happen- 
ings. Occasionally It enables one to meet emergencies In 
the best possible fashion. While I was Police Commis- 
sioner an anti-Semitic preacher from Berlin, Rector Ahl- 
wardt, came over to New York to preach a crusade against 
the Jews. Many of the New York Jews were much excited 
and asked me to prevent him from speaking and not to 
give him police protection. This, I told them, was impos- 
sible ; and if possible would have been undesirable because 
it would have made him a martyr. The proper thing to 
do was to make him ridiculous. Accordingly I detailed for 
his protection a Jew sergeant and a score or two of Jew police- 



2o6 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

men. He made his harangue against the Jews under the 
active protection of some forty poHcemen, every one of 
them a Jew ! It was the most effective possible answer ; 
and incidentally it was an object-lesson to our people, whose 
greatest need it is to learn that there must be no division 
by class hatred, whether this hatred be that of creed against 
creed, nationality against nationality, section against sec- 
tion, or men of one social or industrial condition against 
men of another social and industrial condition. We must 
ever judge each individual on his own conduct and merits, 
and not on his membership in any class, whether that class 
be based on theological, social, or industrial considerations. 

Among my political opponents when I was Police Com- 
missioner was the head of a very influential local Democratic 
organization. He was a State Senator usually known as Big 
Tim Sullivan. Big Tim represented the morals of another era ; 
that is, his principles and actions were very much those of a 
Norman noble in the years immediately succeeding the Battle 
of Hastings. (This will seem flattery only to those who are 
not acquainted with the real histories and antecedents of 
the Norman nobles of the epoch in question.) His applica- 
tion of these eleventh-century theories to our nineteenth- 
century municipal democratic conditions brought him into 
sharp contact with me, and with one of my right-hand men 
in the Department, Inspector John McCullough. Under 
the old dispensation this would have meant that his friends 
and kinsfolk were under the ban. 

Now it happened that in the Department at that time 
there was a nephew or cousin of his, Jerry D. Sullivan. I 
found that Jerry was an uncommonly good man, a con- 
scientious, capable officer, and I promoted him. I do not 
know whether Jerry or Jerry's cousin (Senator Sullivan) 
was more astonished. The Senator called upon me to 
express what I am sure was a very genuine feeling of appre- 
ciation. Poor Jerry died, I think of consumption, a year 
or two after I left the Department. He was promoted 
again after I left, and he then showed that he possessed 
the very rare quality of gratitude, for he sent me a telegram 
dated January 15, 1898, running as follows: "Was made 



THE NEW YORK POLICE 207 

sergeant to-day. I thank you for all In my first advance- 
ment." And in a letter written to me he said: "In the 
future, as in the past, I will endeavor at all times to per- 
form my duty honestly and fearlessly, and never cause 
you to feel that you were mistaken in me, so that you will 
be justly proud of my record." The Senator, though polit- 
ically opposed to me, always kept a feeling of friendship 
for me after this incident. He served in Congress while 
I was President. 

The police can be used to help all kinds of good purposes. 
When I was Police Commissioner much difficulty had been 
encountered in locating illegal and fraudulent practitioners 
of medicine. Dr. Maurice Lewi called on me, with a letter 
from James Russell Parsons, the Secretary of the Board of 
Regents at Albany, and asked me if I could not help. After 
questioning him I found that the local authorities were 
eager to prosecute these men, but could not locate them ; 
and I made up my mind I would try my hand at it. Accord- 
ingly, a sealed order was sent to the commanding officer 
of each police precinct in New York, not to be opened until 
just before the morning roll call, previous to the police 
squad going on duty. This order required that, immediately 
upon reaching post, each patrolman should go over his 
beat and enter upon a sheet of paper, provided for that pur- 
pose, the full name and address of every doctor sign there 
appearing. Immediately upon securing this information, 
the patrolman was instructed to return the sheet to the offi- 
cer in charge of the precinct. The latter in turn was in- 
structed to collect and place in one large envelope and to 
return to Police Headquarters all the data thus received. 
As a result of this procedure, within two hours the prose- 
cuting officials of the city of New York were in possession 
of the name and address of every person in New York who 
announced himself as a physician ; and scores of pretended 
physicians were brought to book or driven from the city. 

One of the perennially serious and difficult problems, 
and one of the chief reasons for police blackmail and cor- 
ruption, is to be found in the excise situation in New York. 
When I was Police Commissioner, New York was a citA' 



2o8 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

with twelve or fifteen thousand saloons, with a State law 
which said they should be closed on Sundays, and with a 
local sentiment which put a premium on violating the law 
by making Sunday the most profitable day in the week to 
the saloon-keeper who was willing to take chances. It 
was this willingness to take chances that furnished to the 
corrupt politician and the corrupt police officer their Oppor- 
tunities. 

There was in New York City a strong sentiment in favor 
of honesty in politics ; there was also a strong sentiment 
in favor of opening the saloons on Sundays ; and, finally, 
there was a strong sentiment in favor of keeping the saloons 
closed on Sunday. Unfortunately, many of the men who 
favored honest government nevertheless preferred keeping 
the saloons open to having honest government ; and many 
others among the men who favored honest government put 
it second to keeping the saloons closed. Moreover, among 
the people who wished the law obeyed and the saloons 
closed there were plenty who objected strongly to every 
step necessary to accomplish the result, although they also 
insisted that the result should be accomplished. 

Meanwhile the politicians found an incredible profit in 
using the law as a club to keep the saloons in line; all except 
the biggest, the owners of which, or the owners of the brew- 
eries back of which, sat in the inner councils of Tammany, 
or controlled Tammany's allies in the Republican organiza- 
tion. The police used the partial and spasmodic enforce- 
ment of the law as a means of collecting blackmail. The 
result was that the officers of the law, the politicians, and 
the saloon-keepers became inextricably tangled in a net- 
work of crime and connivance at crime. The most powerful 
saloon-keepers controlled the politicians and the police, 
while the latter in turn terrorized and blackmailed all the 
other saloon-keepers. It was not a case of non-enforce- 
ment of the law. The law was very actively enforced, but 
it was enforced with corrupt discrimination. 

It is difficult for men who have not been brought into 
contact with that side of political life which deals with the 
underworld to understand the brazen openness with which 



THE NEW YORK POLICE 209 

this blackmailing of lawbreakers was carried out. A further 
very dark fact was that many of the men responsible for 
putting the law on the statute-books in order to please one 
element of their constituents, also connived at or even prof- 
ited by the corrupt and partial non-enforcement of the law 
in order to please another set of their constituents, or to 
secure profit for themselves. The organ of the liquor-sellers 
at that time was the Whie and Spirit Gazette. The 
editor of this paper believed in selling liquor on Sunday, 
and felt that it was an outrage to forbid it. But he also 
felt that corruption and blackmail made too big a price 
to pay for the partial non-enforcement of the law. He made 
in his paper a statement, the correctness of which was never 
questioned, which offers a startling commentary on New 
York politics of that period. In this statement he recited 
the fact that the system of blackmail had been brought 
to such a state of perfection, and had become so oppressive 
to the liquor dealers themselves, that they communicated 
at length on the subject with Governor Hill (the State Deni- 
ocratic boss) and then with Mr. Croker (the city Democratic 
boss). Finally the matter was formally taken up by a com- 
mittee of the Central Association of Liquor Dealers in an 
interview they held with Mr. Martin, my Tammany pred- 
ecessor as President of the police force. In matter-of- 
course way the editor's statement continues : "An agree- 
ment was made between the leaders of Tammany Hall and 
the liquor dealers according to which the monthly blackmail 
paid to the force should be discontinued in return for politi- 
cal support." Not only did the big bosses, State and local, 
treat this agreement, and the corruption to which it was 
due, as normal and proper, but they never even took the 
trouble to deny what had been done when it was made 
public. Tammany and the police, however, did not fully 
live up to the agreement ; and much discrimination of a 
very corrupt kind, and of a very exasperating kind to liquor- 
sellers who wished to be honest, continued in connection 
with the enforcing of the law. 

In short, the agreement was kept only with those who had 
"pull." These men with "pull" were benefited when their 



2IO THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

rivals were bullied and blackmailed by the police. The 
police, meanwhile, who had bought appointment or pro- 
motion, and the politicians back of them, extended the black- 
mailing to include about everything from the pushcart 
peddler and the big or small merchant who wished to use 
the sidewalk illegally for his goods, up to the keepers of 
the brothel, the gambling-house, and the policy-shop. 
The total blackmail ran into millions of dollars. New York 
was a wide-open town. The big bosses rolled in wealth, 
and the corrupt policemen who ran the force lost all sense 
of decency and justice. Nevertheless, I wish to insist 
on the fact that the honest men on the patrol posts, "the 
men with the night-sticks," remained desirous to see honesty 
obtain, although they were losing courage and hope. 

This was the situation that confronted me when I came 
to Mulberry Street. The saloon was the chief source of 
mischief. It was with the saloon that I had to deal, and 
there was only one way to deal with it. That was to enforce 
the law. The howl that rose was deafening. The pro- 
fessional politicians raved. The yellow press surpassed 
themselves in clamor and mendacity. A favorite asser- 
tion was that I was enforcing a "blue" law, an obsolete 
law that had never before been enforced. As a matter of 
fact, I was only enforcing honestly a law that had hitherto 
been enforced dishonestly. There was very little increase 
in the number of arrests made for violating the Sunday 
law. Indeed, there were weeks when the number of arrests 
went down. The only difference was that there was no 
protected class. Everybody was arrested alike, and I 
took especial pains to see that there was no discrimination, 
and that the big men and the men with political influence 
were treated like every one else. The immediate effect 
was wholly good. I had been told that it was not possible 
to close the saloons on Sunday and that I could not succeed. 
However, I did succeed. The warden of Bellevue Hospital 
reported, two or three weeks after we had begun, that for 
the first time in its existence there had not been a case due 
to a drunken brawl in the hospital all Monday. The police 
courts gave the same testimony, while savings banks recorded 



THE NEW YORK POLICE 211 

increased deposits and pawnshops hard times. The most 
touching of all things was the fact that we received letters, 
literally by the hundred, from mothers in tenement-houses 
who had never been allowed to take their children to the 
country in the wide-open days, and who now found their 
husbands willing to take them and their families for an 
outing on Sunday. Jake Riis and I spent one Sunday from 
morning till night in the tenement districts, seeing for our- 
selves what had happened. 

During the two years that we were in office things never 
slipped back to anything like what they had been before. 
But we did not succeed in keeping them quite as highly 
keyed as during these first weeks. As regards the Sunday- 
closing law, this was partly because public sentiment was 
not really with us. The people who had demanded honesty, 
but who did not like to pay for it by the loss of illegal pleas- 
ure, joined the openly dishonest in attacking us. More- 
over, all kinds of ways of evading the law were tried, and 
some of them were successful. The statute, for instance, 
permitted any man to take liquor with meals. After two 
or three months a magistrate was found who decided judi- 
cially that seventeen beers and one pretzel made a meal — 
after which decision joy again became unconfined in at least 
some of the saloons, and the yellow press gleefully announced 
that my "tyranny" had been curbed. But my prime 
object, that of stopping blackmail, was largely attained. 

All kinds of incidents occurred in connection with this 
crusade. One of them introduced me to a friend who 
remains a friend yet. His name was Edward J. Bourke. 
He was one of the men who entered the police force through 
our examinations shortly after I took office. I had sum- 
moned twenty or thirty of the successful applicants to let 
me look over them ; and as I walked into the hall, one of 
them, a well-set-up man, called out sharply to the others, 
"Gangway," making them move to one side. I found he 
had served in the United States navy. The incident was 
sufficient to make me keep him in mind. A month later I 
was notified by a police reporter, a very good fellow, that 
Bourke was in difficulties, and that he thought I had better 



212 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



look into the matter myself, as Bourke was being accused 
by certain very influential men of grave misconduct in an 
arrest he had made the night before. Accordingly, I took 
the matter up personally. I found that on the new patrol- 
man's beat the preceding night — a new beat — there was 

a big saloon run by 
a man of great in- 
fluence in political 
circles known as 
"King" Calahan. 
After midnight the 
saloon was still run- 
ning in full blast, 
and Bourke, step- 
ping inside, told 
Calahan to close up. 
It was at the time 
filled with "friends 
of personal liberty," 
as Governor Hill 
used at that time, 
in moments of pa- 
thos, to term every- 
body who regarded 
as tyranny any re- 
striction on the sale 
of liquor. Calahan's 
saloon had never be- 
fore in its history 
been closed, and to 
have a green cop 
tell him to close it 
seemed to him so incredible that he regarded it merely as a bad 
jest. On his next round Bourke stepped in and repeated the 
order. Calahan felt that the jest had gone too far, and by 
way of protest knocked Bourke down. This was an error of 
judgment on his part, for when Bourke arose he knocked 
down Calahan. The two then grappled and fell on the floor, 
while the "friends of personal liberty" danced around the 




Captain Edward J. Bourke. 

" 'King' Calahan's saloon had never before in its history 
been closed, and to have a green cop tell him to close 
seemed to him so incredible that he regarded it merely 
as a bad jest." 



THE NEW YORK POLICE 213 

fight and endeavored to stamp on everything they thought 
wasn't Calahan. However, Bourke, though pretty roughly 
handled, got his man and shut the saloon. When he 
appeared against the lawbreaker in court next day, he 
found the court-room crowded with influential Tammany 
Hall politicians, backed by one or two Republican leaders 
of the same type ; for Calahan was a baron of the under- 
world, and both his feudal superiors and his feudal inferiors 
gathered to the rescue. His backers In court included a 
Congressman and a State Senator, and so deep-rooted was 
the police belief in "pull" that his own superiors had turned 
against Bourke and were preparing to sacrifice him. Just 
at this time I acted on the information given me by my 
newspaper friend by starting in person for the court. The 
knowledge that I knew what was going on, that I meant 
what I said, and that I intended to make the affair personal, 
was all that was necessary. Before I reached the court 
all effort to defend Calahan had promptly ceased, and 
Bourke had come forth triumphant. I immediately pro- 
moted him to roundsman. He is a captain now. He has 
been on the force ever since, save that when the Spanish 
War came he obtained a holiday without pay for six months 
and reentered the navy, serving as gun captain in one of 
the gunboats, and doing his, work, as was to be expected, 
in first-rate fashion, especially when under fire. 

Let me again say that when men tell me that the police 
are irredeemably bad I remember scores and hundreds of 
cases like this of Bourke, like the case I have already men- 
tioned of Raphael, like the other cases I have given above. 
It is useless to tell me that these men are bad. They are 
naturally first-rate men. There are no better men any- 
where than the men of the New York police force ; and when 
they go bad it is because the system is wrong, and because 
they are not given the chance to do the good work they can 
do and would rather do. I never coddled these men. I 
punished them severely whenever I thought their conduct 
required it. All I did was to try to be just; to reward them 
when they did well ; in short, to act squarely by them. I 
believe that, as a whole, they liked me. When, in 191 2, 



214 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

I ran for President on the Progressive ticket, I received 
a number of unsigned letters inclosing sums of money for 
the campaign. One of these inclosed twenty dollars. 
The writer, who did not give his name, said that he was a 
policeman, that I had once had him before me on charges, 
and had fined him twenty dollars ; that, as a matter of fact, 
he had not committed the offense for which I fined him, but 
that the evidence was such that he did not wonder that I 
had been misled, and never blamed me for it, because I had 
acted squarely and had given honest and decent men a 
chance in the Police Department; and that now he inclosed 
a twenty-dollar bill, the amount of the fine inflicted on him 
so many years before. I have always wished I knew who 
the man was. 

The disciplinary courts were very interesting. But it 
was extraordinarily difficult to get at the facts in the more 
complicated cases — as must always be true under similar 
circumstances ; for ordinarily it is necessary to back up the 
superior officer who makes the charge, and yet it is always 
possible that this superior officer is consciously or uncon- 
sciously biased against his subordinate. 

In the courts the charges were sometimes brought by 
police officers and sometimes by private citizens. In the 
latter case we would get queer insights into twilight phases 
of New York life. It was necessary to be always on our 
guard. Often an accusation would be brought against the 
policeman because he had been guilty of misconduct. Much 
more often the accusation merely meant that the officer 
had incurred animosity by doing his duty. I remember one 
amusing case where the oificer was wholly to blame but had 
acted in entire good faith. 

One of the favorite and most demoralizing forms of 
gambling in New York was policy-playing. The policy 
slips consisted of papers with three rows of figures written 
on them. The officer in question was a huge pithecoid 
lout of a creature, with a wooden face and a receding fore- 
head, and his accuser whom he had arrested the preceding 
evening was a little grig of a red-headed man, obviously 
respectable, and almost incoherent with rage. The anger 



THE NEW YORK POLICE 215 

of the little red-headed man was but natural, for he had just 
come out from a night in the station-house. He had been 
arrested late in the evening on suspicion that he was a 
policy-player, because of the rows of figures on a piece of 
paper which he had held in his hand, and because at the time 
of his arrest he had just stepped into the entrance of the 
hall of a tenement-house in order to read by lamplight. 
The paper was produced in evidence. There were the three 
rows of figures all right, but, as the accuser explained, hop- 
ping up and down with rage and excitement, they were all 
of them the numbers of hymns. He was the superintendent 
of a small Sunday-school. He had written down the hymns 
for several future services, one under the other, and on the 
way home was stopping to look at them, under convenient 
lamp-posts, and finally by the light of the lamp in a tene- 
ment-house hallway ; and it was this conduct which struck 
the sagacious man in uniform as "suspicious." 

One of the saddest features of police work is dealing with 
the social evil, with prostitutes and houses of ill fame. 
In so far as the law gave me power, I always treated the men 
taken in any raid on these houses precisely as the women 
were treated. My experience brought me to the very strong 
conviction that there ought not to be any toleration by law 
of the vice. I do not know of any method which will put 
a complete stop to the evil, but I do know certain things 
that ought to be done to minimize it. One of these is 
treating men and women on an exact equality for the same 
act. Another is the establishment of night courts and of 
special commissions to deal with this special class of cases. 
Another is that suggested by the Rev. Charles Stelzle, of the 
Labor Temple — to publish conspicuously the name of the 
owner of any property used for immoral purposes, after 
said owner has been notified of the use and has failed to 
prevent it. Another is to prosecute the keepers and backers 
of brothels, men and women, as relentlessly and punish 
them as severely as pickpockets and common thieves. They 
should never be fined ; they should be imprisoned. As for 
the girls, the very young ones and first oiTenders should be 
put in the charge of probation officers or sent to reforma- 



2i6 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

tones, and the large percentage of feeble-minded girls and 
of incorrigible girls and women should be sent to institu- 
tions created for them. We would thus remove from this 
hideous commerce the articles of commerce. Moreover, 
the Federal Government must in ever-increasing measure 
proceed against the degraded promoters of this commercial- 
ism, for their activities are inter-State, and the Nation can 
often deal with them more effectively than the States ; 
although, as public sentiment becomes aroused. Nation, 
State, and municipality will all cooperate towards the same 
end of rooting out the traffic. But the prime need is to 
raise the level of individual morality ; and, moreover, to 
encourage early marriages, the single standard of sex- 
morality, and a strict sense of reciprocal conjugal obliga- 
tion. The women who preach late marriages are by just 
so much making it difficult to better the standard of 
chastity. 

As regards the white slave traffic, the men engaged in it, 
and the women too, are far worse criminals than any ordi- 
nary murderers can be. For them there is need of such a 
law as that recently adopted in England through the efforts 
of Arthur Lee, M.P., a law which includes whipping for the 
male offenders. There are brutes so low, so infamous, so 
degraded and bestial in their .cruelty and brutality, that 
the only way to get at them is through their skins. Senti- 
mentality on behalf of such men is really almost as unhealthy 
and wicked as the criminality of the men themseves. My 
experience is that there should be no toleration of any 
"tenderloin" or "red light" district, and that, above all, 
there should be the most relentless war on commercialized 
vice. The men who profit and make their living by the 
depravity and the awful misery of other human beings stand 
far below any ordinary criminals, and no measures taken 
against them can be too severe. 

As for the wretched girls who follow the dreadful trade 
in question, a good deal can be done by a change in economic 
conditions. This ought to be done. When girls are paid 
wages inadequate to keep them from starvation, or to permit 
them to live decently, a certain proportion are forced by 



THE NEW YORK POLICE 217 

their economic misery into lives of vice. The employers 
and all others responsible for these conditions stand on a 
moral level not far above the white slavers themselves. 
But it is a mistake to suppose that either the correction of 
these economic conditions or the abolition of the white 
slave trade will wholly correct the evil or will even reach the 
major part of it. The economic factor is very far from 
being the chief factor in inducing girls to go into this dread- 
ful life. As with so many other problems, while there must 
be governmental action, there must also be strengthening of 
the average individual character in order to achieve the 
desired end. Even where economic conditions are bad, 
girls who are both strong and pure will remain unaffected 
by temptations to which girls of weak character or lax 
standards readily yield. Any man who knows the wide 
variation in the proportions of the different races and nation- 
alities engaged in prostitution must come to the conclusion 
that it is out of the question to treat economic conditions as 
the sole conditions or even as the chief conditions that deter- 
mine this question. There are certain races — - the Irish 
are honorably conspicuous among them — which, no matter 
what the economic pressure, furnish relatively few inmates 
of houses of ill fame. I do not believe that the differences 
are due to permanent race characteristics; this is shown 
by the fact that the best settlement houses find that prac- 
tically all their "long-term graduates," so to speak, all the 
girls that come for a long period under their influence, no 
matter what their race or national origin, remain pure. 
In every race there are some naturally vicious individuals 
and some weak individuals who readily succumb under eco- 
nomic pressure. A girl who is lazy and hates hard work, 
a girl whose mind is rather feeble, who is of "subnormal 
intelligence," as the phrase now goes, or a girl who craves 
cheap finery and vapid pleasure, is always in danger. A 
high ideal of personal purity is essential. Where the same 
pressure under the same economic conditions has tenfold 
the effect on one set of people that it has on another, it is 
evident that the question of moral standards is even more 
important than the question of economic standards, very 



2i8 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

important though this question is. It is important for us 
to remember that the girl ought to have the chance, not only 
for the necessaries of life, but for innocent pleasure ; and that 
even more than the man she must not be broken by over- 
work, by excessive toil. Moreover, public opinion and the 
law should combine to hunt down the "flagrant man swine" 
who himself hunts down poor or silly or unprotected girls. 
But we must not, in foolish sentimentality, excuse the girl 
from her duty to keep herself pure. Our duty to achieve 
the same moral level for the two sexes must be performed 
by raising the level for the man, not by lowering it for the 
woman ; and the fact that society must recognize its duty 
in no shape or way relieves, not even to the smallest degree, 
the individual from doing his or her duty. Sentimentality 
which grows maudlin on behalf of the willful prostitute is 
a curse ; to confound her with the entrapped or coerced girl, 
the real white slave, is both foolish and wicked. There are 
evil women just as there are evil men, naturally depraved 
girls just as there are naturally depraved young men ; and 
the right and wise thing, the just thing, to them, and the 
generous thing to innocent girls and decent men, is to wage 
stern war against the evil creatures of both sexes. 

In company with Jacob Riis, I did much work that was 
not connected with the actual discipline of the force or indeed 
with the actual work of the force. There was one thing 
which he and I abolished — police lodging-houses, which were 
simply tramp lodging-houses, and a fruitful encouragement to 
vagrancy. Those who read Mr. Riis's story of his own life 
will remember the incidents that gave him from actual per- 
sonal experience his horror of these tramp lodging-houses. 
As member of the Health Board I was brought into very 
close relations with the conditions of life in the tenement- 
house districts. Here again I used to visit the different 
tenement-house regions, usually in company with Riis, 
to see for myself what the conditions were. It was largely 
this personal experience that enabled me while on the 
Health Board to struggle not only zealously, but with rea- 
sonable efficiency and success, to improve conditions. We 
did our share in making forward strides in the matter of 



THE NEW YORK POLICE 



219 



housing the working people of the city with some regard to 
decency and comfort. 

The midnight trips that Riis and I took enabled me to 
see what the Police Department was doing, and also gave 
me personal insight into some of the problems of city life. 
It is one thing to listen in perfunctory fashion to tales of 
overcrowded tenements, and it is quite another actually to 



■~-^ 







Theodore Roosevelt and the Children of the Tenement. 

see what that overcrowding means, some hot summer night, 
by even a single inspection during the hours of darkness. 
There was a very hot spell one midsummer while I was 
Police Commissioner, and most of each night I spent walk- 
ing through the tenement-house districts and visiting police 
stations to see what was being done. It was a tragic week. 
We did everything possible to alleviate the suffering. Much 
of it was heartbreaking, especially the gasping misery of 
the little children and of the worn-out mothers. Every 
resource of the Health Department, of the Police Depart- 



220 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

ment, and even the Fire Department (which flooded the 
hot streets) was taxed in the effort to render service. The 
heat killed such multitudes of horses that the means at 
our disposal for removing the poor dead beasts proved 
quite inadequate, although every nerve was strained to the 
limit. In consequence we received scores of complaints 
from persons before whose doors dead horses had remained, 
festering in the heat, for two or three days. One irascible 
man sent us furious denunciations, until we were at last 
able to send a big dray to drag away the horse that lay dead 
before his shop door. The huge dray already contained 
eleven other dead horses, and when it reached this par- 
ticular door it broke down, and it was hours before it could 
be moved. The unfortunate man who had thus been cursed 
with a granted wish closed his doors in despair and wrote 
us a final pathetic letter in which he requested us to remove 
either the horses or his shop, he didn't care which. 

I have spoken before of my experience with the tenement- 
house cigar factory law which the highest court of New York 
State declared unconstitutional. My experience in the 
Police Department taught me that not a few of the worst 
tenement-houses were owned by wealthy individuals, who 
hired the best and most expensive lawyers to persuade the 
courts that it was "unconstitutional" to insist on the better- 
ment of conditions. These business men and lawyers were 
very adroit in using a word with fine and noble associations 
to cloak their opposition to vitally necessary movements for 
industrial fair play and decency. They made it evident 
that they valued the Constitution, not as a help to right- 
eousness, but as a means for thwarting movements against 
unrighteousness. After my experience with them I became 
more set than ever in my distrust of those men, whether 
business men or lawyers, judges, legislators, or executive 
officers, who seek to make of the Constitution a fetich for 
the prevention of the work of social reform, for the preven- 
tion of work in the interest of those men, women, and chil- 
dren on whose behalf we should be at liberty to employ 
freely every governmental agency. 

Occasionally during the two years we had to put a stop 



THE NEW YORK POLICE 221 

to riotous violence, and now and then on these occasions 
some of the labor union leaders protested against the actions 
of the police. By this time I was becoming a strong believer 
in labor unions, a strong believer in the rights of labor. 
For that very reason I was all the more bound to see that 
lawlessness and disorder were put down, and that no rioter 
was permitted to masquerade under the guise of being a 
friend of labor or a sympathizer with labor. I was scrupulous 
to see that the labor men had fair play ; that, for instance, 
they were allowed to picket just so far as under the law 
picketing could be permitted, so that the strikers had ample 
opportunity peacefully to persuade other labor men not to 
take their places. But I made it clearly and definitely 
understood that under no circumstances would I permit 
violence or fail to insist upon the keeping of order. If 
there were wrongs, I would join with a full heart in striving 
to have them corrected. But where there was violence all 
other questions had to drop until order was restored. This 
is a democracy, and the people have the power, if they choose 
to exercise it, to make conditions as they ought to be made, 
and to do this strictly within the law; and therefore the first 
duty of the true democrat, of the man really loyal to the 
principles of popular government, is to see that law is 
enforced and order upheld. It was a peculiar gratifica- 
tion to me that so many of the labor leaders with whom 
I was thrown in contact grew cordially to accept this view. 
When I left the Department, several called upon me to say 
how sorry they were that I was not to continue in office. 
One, the Secretary of the Journeyman Bakers' and Con- 
fectioners' International Union, Henry Weismann, wrote 
me expressing his regret that I was going, and his apprecia- 
tion as a citizen of what I had done as Police Commissioner ; 
he added: "I am particularly grateful for your liberal 
attitude toward organized labor, your cordial champion- 
ship of those speaking in behalf of the toilers, and your 
evident desire to do the right thing as you saw it at whatever 
cost." 

Some of the letters I received on leaving the Department 
were from unexpected sources. Mr. E. L. Godkin, an editor 



222 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

who in international matters was not a patriotic man, wrote 
protesting against my taking the Assistant-Secretaryship 
of the Navy, and adding : " I have a concern, as the 
Quakers say, to put on record my earnest beHef that in 
New York you are doing the greatest work of which any 
American to-day is capable, and exhibiting to the young 
men of the country the spectacle of a very important office 
administered by a man of high character in the most effi- 
cient way amid a thousand difficulties. As a lesson in 
politics I cannot think of anything more instructive." 

About the same time I had a letter from Mr. (afterwards 
Ambassador) James Bryce, also expressing regret that I 
was leaving the Police Department, but naturally with 
much more appreciation of the work that was to be done in 
the Navy Department. This letter I quote, with his per- 
mission, because it conveys a lesson to those who are inclined 
always to think that the conditions of the present time are 
very bad. It was written July 7, 1897. Mr. Bryce spoke 
of the possibility of coming to America in a month or so, 
and continued : " I hope I may have a chance of seeing you 
if I do get over, and of drawing some comfort from you as 
regards your political phenomena, which, so far as I can 
gather from those of your countrymen I have lately seen, 
furnish some good opportunities for a persistent optimist 
like myself to show that he is not to be lightly discouraged. 
Don't suppose that things are specially 'nice,' as a lady would 
say, in Europe either. They are not." Mr. Bryce was a 
very friendly and extraordinarily competent observer of 
things American ; and there was this distinct note of dis- 
couragement about our future in the intimate letter he was 
thus sending. Yet this was at the very time when the 
United States was entering on a dozen years during which our 
people accomplished more good, and came nearer realizing 
the possibilities of a great, free, and conscientious democracy, 
than during any other dozen years in our history, save only 
the years of Lincoln's Presidency and the period during which 
the Nation was founded. 



CHAPTER \ II 



THE WAR OF AMERICA THE UNREADY 




A Spanish Cannon on the Lawn at 
Sagamore. 



I SUPPOSE the United 
States will always be 
unready for war, and 
in consequence will al- 
ways be exposed to great 
expense, and to the pos- 
sibility of the gravest calam- 
ity, when the Nation goes 
to war. This is no new 
thing. Americans learn only 
from catastrophes and not 
from experience. 

There would have been 
no war in 1812 if, in the 
previous decade, America, 

instead of announcing that "peace was her passion," in- 
stead of acting on the theory that unpreparedness averts 
war, had been willing to go to the expense of providing 
a fleet of a score of ships of the line. However, in that 
case, doubtless the very men who in the actual event 
deplored the loss of life and waste of capital which their 
own supineness had brought about would have loudly in- 
veighed against the "excessive and improper cost of arma- 
ments" ; so it all came to about the same thing in the end. 

There is no more thoroughgoing international Mrs. 
Gummidge, and no more utterly useless and often utterly 
mischievous citizen, than the peace-at-any-price, universal- 
arbitration type of being, who is always complaining either 
about war or else about the cost of the armaments which 
act as the insurance against war. There is every reason why 
we should try to limit the cost of armaments, as these tend 
to grow excessive, but there is also every reason to remember 

223 



224 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

that in the present stage of civilization a proper armament is 
the surest guarantee of peace — and is the only guarantee 
that war, if it does come, will not mean irreparable and 
overwhelming disaster. 

In the spring of 1897 Presidenl McKinley appointed me 
Assistant Secretary of the Navy. I owed the appointment 
chiefly to the efforts of Senator H. C. 1 .odge of Massachusetts, 
who doubtless was actuated mainly by his long and close 
friendship for me, but also — I like to believe — by his keen 
interest in the navy. The first book I had ever published, 
fifteen years previously, was "The History of the Naval 
War of 1812" ; and I have always taken the interest in the 
navy which every good American ought to take. At 
the time I wrote the book, in the early eighties, the navy had 
reached its nadir, and we were then utterly incompetent to 
fight Spain or any other power that had a navy at all. 
Shortly afterwards we began timidly and hesitatingly to 
build up a fleet. It is amusing to recall the roundabout 
steps we took to accomplish our purpose. In the reaction 
after the colossal struggle of the Civil War our strongest 
and most capable men had thrown their whole energy into 
business, into money-making, into the development, and 
above all the exploitation and exhaustion at the most rapid 
rate possible, of our natural resources — mines, forests, 
soil, and rivers. These men were not weak men, but they 
permitted themselves to grow shortsighted and selfish ; 
and while many of them down at the bottom possessed the 
fundamental virtues, including the fighting virtues, others 
were purely of the glorified huckster or glorified pawnbroker 
type — which when developed to the exclusion of every- 
thing else makes about as poor a national type as the world 
has seen. This unadulterated huckster or pawnbroker type 
is rarely keenly sympathetic in matters of social and indus- 
trial justice, and is usually physically timid and likes to 
cover an unworthy fear of the most just war under high- 
sounding names. 

It was reenforced by the large mollycoddle vote — the 
people who are soft physically and morally, or who have a 
twist in them which makes them acidly cantankerous and 



THE WAR OF AMERICA THE UNREADY 225 

unpleasant as long as they can be so with safety to their 
bodies. In addition there are the good people with no 
imagination and no foresight, who think war will not come, 
but that if it does come armies and navies can be improvised 
• — a very large element, typified by a Senator I knew per- 
sonally who, in a public speech, in answer to a question as 
to what we would do if America were suddenly assailed by a 
first-class military power, answered that "we would build 
a battle-ship in every creek." Then, among the wise and 
high-minded people who in self-respecting and genuine 
fashion strive earnestly for peace, there are the foolish 
fanatics always to be found in such a movement and always 
discrediting it — the men who form the lunatic fringe in all 
reform movements. 

All these elements taken together made a body of public 
opinion so important during the decades immediately suc- 
ceeding the Civil War as to put a stop to any serious effort to 
keep the Nation in a condition of reasonable military pre- 
paredness. The representatives of this opinion then voted 
just as they now do when they vote against battle-ships 
or against fortifying the Panama Canal. It would have 
been bad enough if we had been content to be weak, and, 
in view of our weakness, not to bluster. But we were 
not content with such a policy. We wished to enjoy the 
incompatible luxuries of an unbridled tongue and an un- 
ready hand. There was a very large element which was 
ignorant of our military weakness, or, naturally enough, 
unable to understand it; and another large element which 
liked to please its own vanity by listening to offensive talk 
about foreign nations. Accordingly, too many of our 
politicians, especially in Congress, found that the cheap 
and easy thing to do was to please the foolish peace people 
by keeping us weak, and to please the foolish violent people 
by passing denunciatory resolutions about international 
matters — resolutions which would have been improper 
even if we had been strong. Their idea was to please both 
the mollycoddle vote and the vote of the international tail- 
twisters by upholding, with pretended ardor and mean 
intelligence, a National policy of peace with insult. 

Q 



226 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

I abhor unjust war. I abhor injustice and bullying by 
the strong at the expense of the weak, whether among nations 
or individuals. I abhor violence and bloodshed. I be- 
lieve that war should never be resorted to when, or so long 
as, it is honorably possible to avoid it. I respect all men 
and women who from high motives and with sanity and 
self-respect do all they can to avert war. I advocate prep- 
aration for war in order to avert war ; and I should never 
advocate war unless it were the only alternative to dis- 
honor. I describe the folly of which so many of our people 
were formerly guilty, in order that we may in our own day 
be on our guard against similar folly. 

We did not at the time of which I write take our foreign 
duties seriously, and as we combined bluster in speech 
with refusal to make any preparation whatsoever for 
action, we were not taken seriously in return. Gradually 
a slight change for the better occurred, the writings of Cap- 
tain Mahan playing no small part therein. We built some 
modern cruisers to start with ; the people who felt that 
battle-ships were wicked compromising with their mis- 
guided consciences by saying that the cruisers could be 
used "to protect our commerce" — ^ which they could not 
be, unless they had battle-ships to back them. Then we 
attempted to build more powerful fighting vessels, and as 
there was a section of the public which regarded battle- 
ships as possessing a name immorally suggestive of violence, 
we compromised by calling the new ships armored cruisers, 
and making them combine with exquisite nicety all the 
defects and none of the virtues of both types. Then we got 
to the point of building battle-ships. But there still re- 
mained a public opinion, as old as the time of Jefferson, 
which thought that in the event of war all our problem ought 
to be one of coast defense, that we should do nothing except 
repel attack ; an attitude about as sensible as that of a prize- 
fighter who expected to win by merely parrying instead of 
hitting. To meet the susceptibilities of this large class of 
well-meaning people, we provided for the battle-ships 
under the name of "coast defense battle-ships" ; meaning 
thereby that we did not make them quite as seaworthy as 



THE WAR OF AMERICA THE UNREADY 227 

they ought to hav'c been, or with quite as much coal capacity 
as they ought to have had. Then we decided to build real 
battle-ships. But there still remained a lingering remnant 
of public opinion that clung to the coast defense theory, 
and we met this in beautiful fashion by providing for "sea- 
going coast defense battle-ships" — the fact that the name 
was a contradiction in terms being of very small conse- 
quence compared to the fact that we did thereby get real 
battle-ships. 

Our men had to be trained to handle the ships singly 
and in fleet formation, and they had to be trained -to use the 
new weapons of precision with which the ships were armed. 
Not a few of the older officers, kept in the service under our 
foolish rule of pure seniority promotion, were not competent 
for the task ; but a proportion of the older officers were 
excellent, and this was true of almost all the younger officers. 
They were naturally first-class men, trained in the admirable 
naval school at Annapolis. They were overjoyed that at 
last they were given proper Instruments to work with, and 
they speedily grew to handle these ships Individually In 
the best fashion. They were fast learning to handle them 
in squadron and fleet formation ; but when the war with 
Spain broke out, they had as yet hardly grasped the prin- 
ciples of modern scientific naval gunnery. 

Soon after I began work as Assistant Secretary of the Navy 
I became convinced that the war would come. The revolt 
In Cuba had dragged its weary length until conditions in 
the Island had become so dreadful as to be a standing dis- 
grace to us for permitting them to exist. There is much that 
I sincerely admire about the Spanish character; and there 
are few men for whom I have felt greater respect than for 
certain gentlemen of Spain whom I have known. But 
Spain attempted to govern her colonies on archaic principles 
which rendered her control of them Incompatible with the 
advance of humanity and Intolerable to the conscience of 
mankind. In 1898 the so-called war in Cuba had dragged 
along for years with unspeakable horror, degradation, and 
misery. It was not "war" at all, but murderous oppres- 
sion. Cuba was devastated. 



i 



228 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

During those years, while we continued at "peace," several 
hundred times as many lives were lost, lives of men, women, 
and children, as were lost during the three months' "war" 
which put an end to this slaughter and opened a career of 
peaceful progress to the Cubans. Yet there were misguided 
professional philanthropists who cared so much more for 
names than for facts that they preferred a "peace" of con- 
tinuous murder to a "war" which stopped the murder and 
brought real peace. Spain's humiliation was certain, any- 
how ; indeed, it was more certain without war than with it, 
for she could not permanently keep the island, and she 
minded yielding to the Cubans more than yielding to 
us. Our own direct interests were great, because of 
the Cuban tobacco and sugar, and especially because of 
Cuba's relation to the projected Isthmian canal. But even 
greater were our interests from the standpoint of humanity. 
Cuba was at our very doors. It was a dreadful thing for 
us to sit supinely and watch her death agony. It was our 
duty, even more from the standpoint of National honor 
than from the standpoint of National interest, to stop the 
devastation and destruction. Because of these considera- 
tions I favored war ; and to-day, when in retrospect it is 
easier to see things clearly, there are few humane and honor- 
able men who do not believe that the war was both just and 
necessary. 

The big financiers and the men generally who were sus- 
ceptible to touch on the money nerve, and who cared nothing 
for National honor if it conflicted even temporarily with 
business prosperity, were against the war. The more fatu- 
ous type of philanthropist agreed with them. The news- 
papers controlled by, or run in the interests of, these two 
classes deprecated war, and did everything in their power to 
prevent any preparation for war. As a whole the people in 
Congress were at that time (and are now) a shortsighted set 
as regards international matters. There were a few men. 
Senators Cushman K. Davis,^ for instance, and John Morgan, 

1 In a letter written me just before I became Assistant Secretary, Senator Davis 
unburdened his mind about one of the foolish "peace" proposals of that period; 
his letter running in part: "I left the Senate Chamber about three o'clock this 




Copyright by ( llnedinst. 

Mr. Roosevelt at his Desk when Assistant Secretary of the Navy. 



230 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

who did look ahead ; and Senator H. C. Lodge, who through- 
out his quarter of a century of service in the Senate and 
House has ever stood foremost among those who uphold 
with farsighted fearlessness and strict justice to others 
our national honor and interest ; but most of the Congressmen 
were content to follow the worst of all possible courses, 
that is, to pass resolutions which made war more likely, and 
yet to decline to take measures which would enable us to 
meet the war if it did come. 

However, in the Navy Department we were able to do a 
good deal, thanks to the energy and ability of some of the 
bureau chiefs, and to the general good tone of the service. 
I soon found my natural friends and allies in such men as 
Evans, Taylor, Sampson, Wainwright, Brownson, Schroeder, 
Bradford, Cowles, Cameron Winslow, O'Neil, and others 
like them. I used all the power there was in my office to 
aid these men in getting the material ready. I also tried to 
gather from every source information as to who the best 
men were to occupy the fighting positions. 

Sound naval opinion was overwhelmingly in favor of 
Dewey to command one squadron. I was already watching 
him, for I had been struck by an incident in his past career. 
It was at a time when there was threat of trouble with Chile. 
Dewey was oif the Argentine, and was told to get ready to 
move to the other coast of South America, If the move 
became necessary, he would have to have coal, and yet if he 

afternoon when there was going on a deal of mowing and chattering over the treaty 
by which the United States is to be bound to arbitrate its sovereign functions — 
for policies are matters of sovereignty. . . . The aberrations of the social move- 
ment are neither progress nor retrogression. They represent merely a local and 
temporary sagging of the line of the great orbit. Tennyson knew this when he 
wrote that fine and noble 'Maud.' I often read it, for to do so does me good." 
After quoting one of Poe's stories the letter continues : "The world will come out 
all right. Let him who believes in the decline of the military spirit observe the 
boys of a common school during the recess or the noon hour. Of course when 
American patriotism speaks out from its rank and file and demands action or ex- 
pression, and when, thereupon, the 'business man,' so called, places his hand on 
his stack of reds as if he feared a policeman were about to disturb the game, and 
protests until American patriotism ceases to continue to speak as it had started to 
do — why, you and 1 get mad, and I swear. I hope you will be with us here after 
March 4. We can then pass judgment together on the things we don't like, and 
together indulge in hopes that I believe are prophetic." 



THE WAR OF AMERICA THE UNREADY 231 

did not make the move, the coal would not be needed. In 
such a case a man afraid of responsibility always acts rigidly 
by the regulations and communicates with the Department 
at home to get authority for everything he does ; and there- 
fore he usually accomplishes nothing whatever, but is able 
to satisfy all individuals with red-tape minds by trium- 
phantly pointing out his compliance with the regulations. 
In a crisis, the man worth his salt is the man who meets 
the needs of the situation in whatever way is necessary. 
Dewey purchased the coal and was ready to move at once if 
need arose. The affair blew over ; the need to move did 
not occur; and for some time there seemed to be a chance 
that Dewey would get into trouble over having purchased 
the coal, for our people are like almost all other peoples in 
requiring responsible officers under such conditions to decide 
at their own personal peril, no matter which course they 
follow. However, the people higher up ultimately stood by 
Dewey. 

The incident made me feel that here was a man who could 
be relied upon to prepare in advance, and to act promptly, 
fearlessly, and on his own responsibility when the emer- 
gency arose. Accordingly I did my best to get him put in 
command of the Asiatic fleet, the fleet where it was most 
essential to have a man who would act without referring 
things back to the home authorities. An officer senior to 
him, of the respectable commonplace type, was being pushed 
by certain politicians who I knew had influence with the 
Navy Department and with the President. I would have 
preferred to see Dewey get the appointment without appeal- 
ing to any politician at all. But while this was my pref- 
erence, the essential thing was to get him the appointment. 
For a naval officer to bring pressure to get himself a soft 
and easy place is unpardonable; but a large leniency should 
be observed toward the man who uses influence only to 
get himself a place in the picture near the flashing of the 
guns. There was a Senator, Proctor of Vermont, who I 
knew was close to McKinley, and who was very ardent for 
the war, and desirous to have it fought in the most efficient 
fashion. I suggested to Dewey that he should enlist the 



232 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

services of Senator Proctor, which was accordingly done. 
In a fortunate hour for the Nation, Dewey was given com- 
mand of the Asiatic squadron. 

When the Maine was blown up in Havana Harbor, war 
became inevitable. A number of the peace-at-any-price 
men of course promptly assumed the position that she had 
blown herself up ; but investigation showed that the ex- 
plosion was from outside. And, in any event, it would 
have been impossible to prevent war. The enlisted men of 
the navy, who often grew bored to the point of desertion 
in peace, became keyed up to a high pitch of efficiency, and 
crowds of fine young fellows, from the interior as well as 
from the seacoast, thronged to enlist. The navy officers 
showed alert ability and unwearied industry in getting things 
ready. There was one deficiency, however, which there was 
no time to remedy, and of the very existence of which, 
strange to say, most of our best men were ignorant. 
Our navy had no idea how low our standard of marks- 
manship was. We had not realized that the modern 
battle-ship had become such a complicated piece of 
mechanism that the old methods of training in marks- 
manship were as obsolete as the old muzzle-loading broadside 
guns themselves. Almost the only man in the navy who 
fully realized this was our naval attache at Paris, Lieutenant 
Sims. He wrote letter after letter pointing out how fright- 
fully backward we were in marksmanship. I was much 
impressed by his letters ; but Wainwright was about the 
only other man who was. And as Sims proved to be mis- 
taken in his belief that the French had taught the Spaniards 
how to shoot, and as the Spaniards proved to be much worse 
even than we were, in the service generally Sims was treated 
as an alarmist. But although I at first partly acquiesced 
in this view, I grew uneasy when I studied the small pro- 
portion of hits to shots made by our vessels in battle. When 
I was President I took up the matter, and speedily became 
convinced that we needed to revolutionize our whole training 
in marksmanship. Sims was given the lead in organizing 
and introducing the new system ; and to him more than to 
any other one man was due the astonishing progress made by 



THE WAR OF AMERICA THE UNREADY 233 

our fleet in this respect, a progress which made the fleet, 
gun for gun, at least three times as efi"ective, in point of 
fighting efficiency, in 1908, as it was in 1902. The shots that 
hit are the shots that count ! 

Like the people, the Government was for a long time un- 
willing to prepare for war, because so many honest but mis- 
guided men believed that the preparation itself tended to 
bring on the war. I did not in the least share this feeling, 
and whenever I was left as Acting Secretary I did everything 
in my power to piit us in readiness. I knew that in the 
event of war Dewey could be slipped like a wolf-hound from 
a leash; I was sure that if he were given half a chance he 
would strike instantly and with telling effect ; and I made up 
my mind that all I could do to give him that half-chance 
should be done. I was in the closest touch with Senator 
Lodge throughout this period, and either consulted him 
about or notified him of all the moves I was taking. By 
the end of February I felt it was vital to send Dewey (as 
well as each of our other commanders who were not in home 
waters) instructions that would enable him to be in readiness 
for immediate action. On the afternoon of Saturday, 
February 25, when I was Acting Secretary, Lodge called on 
me just as I was preparing the order, which (as it was 
addressed to a man of the right stamp) was of much impor- 
tance to the subsequent operations. Admiral Dewey 
speaks of the incident as follows, in his autobiography : 

"The first real step [as regards active naval preparations] 
was taken on February 25, when telegraphic instructions 
were sent to the Asiatic, European, and South Atlantic 
squadrons to rendezvous at certain convenient points 
where, should war break out, they would be most avail- 
able. 

"The message to the Asiatic squadron bore the signature 
of that Assistant Secretary who had seized the opportunity 
while Acting Secretary to hasten preparations for a conflict 
which was inevitable. As Mr. Roosevelt reasoned, pre- 
cautions for readiness would cost little in time of peace, and 
yet would be invaluable in case of war. His cablegram 
was as follows : 



234 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

" ' Washington, February 25, '98. 

'"'"'' Dewey ^ Hong Kong: 

" ' Order the squadron, except the Monocacy, to Hong 
Kong. Keep full of coal. In the event of declaration of 
war Spain, your duty will be to see that the Spanish squadron 
does not leave the Asiatic coast, and then offensive opera- 
tions in Philippine Islands. Keep Olympia until further 
orders. Roosevelt.' 

"(The reference to keeping the Olympia until further 
orders was due to the fact that I had been notified that she 
would soon be recalled to the United States.) " 

All that was needed with Dewey was to give him the 
chance to get ready, and then to strike, without being 
hampered by orders from those not on the ground. Success 
in war depends very largely upon choosing a man fit to 
exercise such powers, and then giving him the powers. 

It would be instructive to remember, if only we were 
willing to do so, the fairly comic panic which swept in 
waves over our seacoast, first when it became evident that 
war was about to be declared, and then when it was 
declared. The public waked up to the sufficiently obvious 
fact that the Government was in its usual state — perennial 
unreadiness for war. Thereupon the people of the seaboard 
district passed at one bound from unreasoning confidence 
that war never could come to unreasoning fear as to what 
might happen now that it had come. That acute philoso- 
pher Mr. Dooley proclaimed that in the Spanish Warwe were 
in a dream, but that the Spaniards were in a trance. This 
just about summed up the facts. Our people had for decades 
scoffed at the thought of making ready for possible war. 
Now, when it was too late, they not only backed every 
measure, wise and unwise, that offered a chance of supplying 
a need that ought to have been met before, but they also 
fell into a condition of panic apprehension as to what the 
foe might do. 

For years we had been saying, just as any number of our 
people now say, that no nation would venture to attack 
us. Then when we did go to war with an exceedingly 



THE WAR OF AMERICA THE UNREADY 235 

feeble nation, we, for the time being, rushed to the other 
extreme of feeling, and attributed to this feeble nation 
plans of offensive warfare which it never dreamed of 
making, and which, if made, it would have been wholly 
unable to execute. Some of my readers doubtless remember 
the sinister intentions and unlimited potentialities for de- 
struction with which the fertile imagination of the yellow press 
endowed the armored cruiser Viscaya when she appeared 
in American waters just before war was declared. The 
state of nervousness along much of the seacoast was funny 
in view of the lack of foundation for it ; but it offered food for 
serious thought as to what would happen if we ever became 
engaged with a serious foe. 

The Governor of one State actually announced that he 
would not permit the National Guard of that State to leave 
its borders, the idea being to retain it against a possible 
Spanish invasion. So many of the business men of the city 
of Boston took their securities inland to Worcester that the 
safe deposit companies of Worcester proved unable to take 
care of them. In my own neighborhood on Long Island 
clauses were gravely put into leases to the effect that if the 
property were destroyed by the Spaniards the lease should 
lapse. As Assistant Secretary of the Navy I had every 
conceivable impossible request made to me. Members of 
Congress who had actively opposed building any navy 
came clamorously around to ask each for a ship for some 
special purpose of protection connected with his district. 
It seems incredible, but it is true, that not only these Con- 
gressmen but the Chambers of Commerce and Boards of 
Trade of different coast cities all lost their heads for the time 
being, and raised a deafening clamor and brought every 
species of pressure to bear on the Administration to get it to 
adopt the one most fatal course — that is, to distribute the 
navy, ship by ship, at all kinds of points and in all kinds of 
ports with the idea of protecting everything everywhere, 
and thereby rendering it absolutely certain that even the 
Spanish fleet, poor though it was, would be able to pick up 
our own navy ship by ship in detail. One Congressman 
besought me for a ship to protect Jckyll Island, off the coast 



236 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

of Georgia, an island which derived its sole consequence 
because it contained the winter homes of certain millionaires. 
A lady whose husband occupied a very influential position, 
and who was normally a most admirable and sensible woman, 
came to insist that a ship should be anchored off a huge sea- 
side hotel because she had a house in the neighborhood. 

There were many such instances. One stood out above 
the others. A certain seaboard State contained in its Con- 
gressional delegation one of the most influential men in 
the Senate, and one of the most influential men in the lower 
house. These two men had been worse than lukewarm 
about building up the navy, and had scofl"ed at the idea of 
there ever being any danger from any foreign power. With 
the advent of war the feelings of their constituents, and there- 
fore their own feelings, sufl"ered an immediate change, and 
they demanded that a ship be anchored in the harbor of their 
city as a protection. Getting no comfort from me, they 
went "higher up," and became a kind of permanent com- 
mittee in attendance upon the President. They were 
very influential men in the Houses, with whom it was im- 
portant for the Administration to keep on good terms ; 
and, moreover, they possessed a pertinacity as great as 
the widow who won her case from the unjust judge. Finally 
the President gave in and notified me to see that a ship 
was sent to the city in question. I was bound that, as long 
as a ship had to be sent, it should not be a ship worth any- 
thing. Accordingly a Civil War Monitor, with one smooth- 
bore gun, manned by a crew of about twenty-one naval 
militia, was sent to the city in question, under convoy of a 
tug. It was a hazardous trip for the unfortunate naval 
militiamen, but it was safely accomplished ; and joy and 
peace descended upon the Senator and the Congressman, 
and upon the President whom they had jointly harassed. 
Incidentally, the fact that the protecting war-vessel would 
not have been a formidable foe to any antagonists of much 
more modern construction than the galleys of Alcibiades 
seemed to disturb nobody. 

This was one side of the picture. The other side was that 
the crisis at once brought to the front any amount of latent 



THE WAR OF AMERICA THE UNREADY 237 

fighting strength. There were plenty of Congressmen 
who showed cool-headed wisdom and resolution. The 
plain people, the men and women back of the persons who 
lost their heads, set seriously to work to see that we did 
whatever was necessary, and made the job a thorough one. 
The young men swarmed to enlist. In time of peace it had 
been difficult to fill the scanty regular army and navy, 
and there were innumerable desertions ; now the ships 
and regiments were over-enlisted, and so many deserters 
returned in order to fight that it became difficult to decide 
what to do with them. England, and to a less degree 
Japan, were friendly. The great powers of Continental 
Europe were all unfriendly. They jeered at our ships and 
men, and with fatuous partisanship insisted that the 
Spaniards would prove too much for our "mercenaries" 
because we were a commercial people of low ideals who 
could not fight, while the men whom we attempted to hire 
for that purpose were certain to run on the day of battle. 

Among my friends was the then Army Surgeon Leonard 
Wood. He was a surgeon. Not having an income, he had 
to earn his own living. He had gone through the Harvard 
Medical School, and had then joined the army in the South- 
west as a contract doctor. He had every physical, moral, 
and mental quality which fitted him for a soldier's life and 
for the exercise of command. In the inconceivably wearing 
and harassing campaigns against the Apaches he had served 
nominally as a surgeon, really In command of troops, on 
more than one expedition. He was as anxious as I was 
that if there were war we should both have our part in it. 
I had always felt that if there were a serious war I wished 
to be in a position to explain to my children why I did take 
part in it, and not why I did not take part in it. Moreover, 
I had very deeply felt that it was our duty to free Cuba, 
and I had publicly expressed this feeling; and when a man 
takes such a position, he ought to be willing to make his / 
words good by his deeds unless there is some very strong 
reason to the contrary. He should pay with his body. 

As soon as war was upon us, Wood and I began to try 
for a chance to go to the front. Congress had authorized 



238 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

the raising of three National Volunteer Cavalry regiments, 
wholly apart from the State contingents. Secretary Alger 
of the War Department was fond of me personally, and Wood 
was his family doctor. Alger had been a gallant soldier in 
the Civil War, and was almost the only member of the 
Administration who felt all along that we would have to go 
to war with Spain over Cuba. He liked my attitude in 
the matter, and because of his remembrance of his own 
experiences he sympathized with my desire to go to the 
front. Accordingly he offered me the command of one 
of the regiments. I told him that after six weeks' service in 
the field I would feel competent to handle the regiment, 
but that I would not know how to equip it or how to get it 
into the first action ; but that Wood was entirely competent 
at once to take command, and that if he would make Wood 
colonel I would accept the lieutenant-colonelcy. General 
Alger thought this an act of foolish self-abnegation on my 
part — instead of its being, what it was, the wisest act I 
could have performed. He told me to accept the colonelcy, 
and that he would make Wood lieutenant-colonel, and that 
Wood would do the work anyway ; but I answered that I 
did not wish to rise on any man's shoulders ; that I hoped 
to be given every chance that my deeds and abilities war- 
ranted ; but that I did not wish what I did not earn, and 
that above all I did not wish to hold any position where 
any one else did the work. He laughed at me a little and 
said I was foolish, but I do not think he really minded, and 
he promised to do as I wished. True to his word, he secured 
the appointment of Wood as colonel and of myself as lieuten- 
ant-colonel of the First United States Volunteer Cavalry. 
This was soon nicknamed, both by the public and by the 
rest of the army, the Rough Riders, doubtless because the 
bulk of the men were from the Southwestern ranch country 
and were skilled in the wild horsemanship of the great plains. 
Wood instantly began the work of raising the regiment. 
He first assembled several old non-commissioned officers 
of experience, put them in office, and gave them blanks for 
requisitions for the full equipment of a cavalry regiment. 
He selected San Antonio as the gathering-place, as it 




Cop>Tight by Falk. 



The Colonel of the Rough Riders. 



240 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

was in a good horse country, near the Gulf from some 
port on which we would have to embark, and near 
an old arsenal and an old army post from which we 
got a good deal of stuff — some of it practically con- 
demned, but which we found serviceable at a pinch, and 
much better than nothing. He organized a horse board in 
Texas, and began purchasing all horses that were not too 
big and were sound. A day or two after he commissioned he 
wrote out in the office of the Secretary of War, under his 
authority, telegrams to the Governors of Arizona, New 
Mexico, Oklahoma, and Indian Territory, in substance as 
follows : 

The President desires to raise volunteers in your 

Territory to form part of a regiment of mounted riflemen 
to be commanded by Leonard Wood, Colonel ; Theodore 
Roosevelt, Lieutenant-Colonel. He desires that the men 
selected should be young, sound, good shots and good 
riders, and that you expedite by all means in your power 
the enrollment of these men. 

(Signed) R. A. Alger, Secretary of War. 

As soon as he had attended to a few more odds and ends he 
left Washington, and the day after his arrival in San Antonio 
the troops began to arrive. 

For several weeks before I joined the regiment, to which 
Wood went ahead of me, I continued as Assistant Secretary 
of the Navy, trying to get some coherence of plan -between 
the War Department and the Navy Department; and also 
being used by Wood to finish getting the equipment for 
the regiment. As regards finding out what the plans of the 
War Department were, the task was simple. They had no 
plans. Even during the final months before the outbreak of 
hostilities very little was done in the way of efficient prep- 
aration. On one occasion, when every one knew that the 
declaration of war was sure to come in a few days, I went on 
military business to the office of oneof thehighestlinegenerals 
of the army, a man who at that moment ought to have 
been working eighteen hours out of the twenty-four on the 



THE WAR OF AMERICA THE UNREADY 241 

vital problems ahead of him. What he was actually doing 
was trying on a new type of smart-looking uniform on 
certain enlisted men ; and he called me in to ask my advice 
as to the position of the pockets in the blouse, with a view 
to making it look attractive. An aide of this general — 
funnily enough a good fighting man in actual service — when 
I consulted him as to what my uniform for the campaign 
should be, laid special stress upon my purchasing a pair of 
black top boots for full dress, explaining that they were 
very effective on hotel piazzas and in parlors. I did not 
intend to be in any hotel if it could possibly be avoided ; 
and as things turned out, I had no full-dress uniform, nothing 
but my service uniform, during my brief experience in the 
army. 

I suppose that war always does bring out what is highest 
and lowest in human nature. The contractors who furnish 
poor materials to the army or the navy in time of war stand 
on a level of infamy only one degree above that of the par- 
ticipants in the white slave traffic themselves. But there 
is conduct far short of this which yet seems inexplicable 
to any man who has in him any spirit of disinterested 
patriotism combined with any power of imagination. Re- 
spectable men, who I suppose lack the imagination thoroughly 
to realize what they are doing, try to make money out of the 
Nation's necessities in war at the very time that other men 
are making every sacrifice, financial and personal, for the 
cause. In the closing weeks of my service as Assistant 
Secretary of the Navy we were collecting ships for auxiliary 
purposes. Some men, at cost to their own purses, helped 
us freely and with efficiency; others treated the affair as 
an ordinary business transaction ; and yet others endeavored, 
at some given crisis when our need was great, to sell us in- 
ferior vessels at exorbitant prices, and used every pressure, 
through Senators and Congressmen, to accomplish their 
ends. In one or two cases they did accomplish them too, 
until we got a really first-class board established to superin- 
tend such purchases, A more curious experience was in 
connection with the point chosen for the starting for the 
expedition against Cuba. I had not supposed that any 



242 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

human being could consider this matter save from the stand- 
point of mlHtary need. But one morning a very wealthy 
and Influential man, a respectable and upright man accord- 
ing to his own lights, called on me to protest against our choice 
of Tampa, and to put in a plea for a certain other port, 
on the ground that his railroad was entitled to its share of the 
profit for hauling the army and equipment ! I happened to 
know that at this time this very man had kinsfolk with the 
army, who served gallantly, and the circumstances of his 
coming to me were such as to show that he was not acting 
secretly, and had no idea that there was anything out of 
the way in his proposal. I think the facts were merely that 
he had been trained to regard business as the sole object in 
life, and that he lacked the imagination to enable him to 
understand the real nature of the request that he was 
making; and, moreover, he had good reason to believe 
that one of his business competitors had been unduly favored. 
The War Department was in far worse shape than the 
Navy Department. The young officers turned out from 
West Point are precisely as good as the young officers turned 
out from Annapolis, and this always has been true. But 
at that time (something has been done to remedy the worst 
conditions since), and ever since the close of the Civil War, 
the conditions were such that after a few years the army 
officer stagnated so far as his profession was concerned. 
When the Spanish War broke out the navy really was largely 
on a war footing, as any navy which Is even respectably 
cared for in time of peace must be. The admirals, captains, 
and lieutenants were continually practicing their profession 
In almost precisely the way that It has to be practiced in 
time of war. Except actually shooting at a foe, most of the 
men on board ship went through in time of peace practically 
all that they would have to go through In time of war. The 
heads of bureaus in the Navy Department were for the most 
part men who had seen sea service, who expected to return 
to sea service, and who were preparing for needs which they 
themselves knew by experience. Moreover, the civilian 
head of the navy had to provide for keeping the ships in a 
state of reasonable efiiciency, and Congress could not hope- 



THE WAR OF AMERICA THE UNREADY 243 

lessly misbehave Itself about the navy without the fact at 
once becoming evident. 

All this was changed so far as the army was concerned. 
Not only was it possible to decrease the efficiency of the army 
without being called to account for it, but the only way in 
which the Secretary of War could gain credit for himself or 
the Administration was by economy, and the easiest way to 
economize was in connection with something that would not 
be felt unless war should arise. The people took no interest 
whatever in the army ; demagogues clamored against it, 
and, inadequate though it was in size, insisted that it should 
be still further reduced. Popular orators always appealed 
to the volunteers ; the regulars had no votes and there was 
no point in politicians thinking of them. The chief activity 
shown by Congressmen about the army was in getting special 
army posts built in places where there was no need for them. 
Even the work of the army in its campaigns against the 
Indians was of such a character that it was generally per- 
formed by small bodies of fifty or a hundred men. Until a 
man ceased being a lieutenant he usually had plenty of pro- 
fessional work to attend to and was employed in the field, 
and, In short, had the same kind of practice that his brother 
In the navy had, and he did his work as well. But once past 
this stage he had almost no opportunity to perform any work 
corresponding to his rank, and but little opportunity to 
do any military work whatsoever. The very best men, 
men like Lawton, Young, ChafTee, Hawkins, and Sumner, 
to mention only men under or beside whom I served, re- 
mained good soldiers, soldiers of the best stamp, in spite of 
the disheartening conditions. But it was not to be expected 
that the average man could continue to grow when every 
influence was against him. Accordingly, when the Spanish 
War suddenly burst upon us, a number of inert elderly 
captains and field officers were, much against their own 
wishes, suddenly pitchforked Into the command of regiments, 
brigades, and even divisions and army corps. Often these 
men failed painfully. This was not their fault ; it was the 
fault of the Nation, that Is, the fault of all of us, of you, my 
reader, and of myself, and of those like us, because we had 



244 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

permitted conditions to be such as to render these men 
unfit for command. Take a stout captain of an out-of-the 
way two-company post, where nothing in the world ever 
occurred even resembhng military action, and where the 
only military problem that really convulsed the post to its 
foundations was the quarrel between the captain and the 
quartermaster as to how high a mule's tail ought to be 
shaved (I am speaking of an actual incident). What could 
be expected of such a man, even though thirty-five years 
before he had been a gallant second lieutenant In the Civil 
War, If, after this intervening do-nothing period, he was 
suddenly put In command of raw troops in a midsummer 
campaign In the tropics ^ 

The bureau chiefs were for the most part elderly incompe- 
tents, whose idea was to do their routine duties in such 
way as to escape the censure of routine bureaucratic superiors 
and to avoid a Congressional investigation. They had not 
the slightest conception of preparing the army for war. It 
was impossible that they could have any such conception. 
The people and the Congress did not wish the army prepared 
for war; and those editors and philanthropists and peace 
advocates who felt vaguely that If the army were Incompe- 
tent their principles were safe, always Inveighed against any 
proposal to make it efficient, on the ground that this showed 
a natural bloodthlrstlness in the proposer. When such were 
the conditions, it was absolutely impossible that either 
the War Department or the army could do well in the event 
of war. Secretary Alger happened to be Secretary when 
war broke out, and all the responsibility for the shortcomings 
of the Department were visited upon his devoted head. He 
was made the scapegoat for our National shortcomings. 
The fault was not his ; the fault and responsibility lay with us, 
the people, who for thirty-three years had permitted our 
representatives in Congress and in National executive office 
to bear themselves so that It was absolutely impossible to 
avoid the great bulk of all the trouble that occurred, and of 
all the shortcomings of which our people complained, during 
the Spanish War. The chief Immediate cause was the 
condition of red-tape bureaucracy which existed In the War 



THE WAR OF AMERICA THE UNREADY 245 

Department at Washington, which had prevented any good 
organization or the preparation of any good plan of operation 
for using our men and supplies. The recurrence of these 
conditions, even though in somewhat less aggravated form, 
in any future emergency is as certain as sunrise unless we 
bring about the principle of a four years' detail in the staff 
corps — a principle which Congress has now for years 
stubbornly refused to grant. 

There are nations who only need to have peaceful ideals 
inculcated, and to whom militarism is a curse and a mis- 
fortune. There are other nations, like our own, so happily 
situated that the thought of war is never present to their 
minds. They are wholly free from any tendency im- 
properly to exalt or to practice militarism. These nations 
should never forget that there must be military ideals no less 
than peaceful ideals. The exaltation of Nogi's career, set 
forth so strikingly in Stanley Washburn's little volume on 
the great Japanese warrior, contains much that is especially 
needed for us of America, prone as we are to regard the 
exigencies of a purely commercial and industrial civilization 
as excusing us from the need of admiring and practicing 
the heroic and warlike virtues. 

Our people are not military. We need normally only a 
small standing army; but there should be behind it a re- 
serve of instructed men big enough to fill it up to full war 
strength, which is over twice the peace strength. Moreover, 
the young men of the country should realize that it is the 
duty of every one of them to prepare himself so that in time 
of need he may speedily become an efficient soldier — a duty 
now generally forgotten, but which should be recognized 
as one of the vitally essential parts of every man's training. 

In endeavoring to get the "Rough Riders" equipped I 
met with some experiences which were both odd and instruc- 
tive. There were not enough arms and other necessaries 
to go round, and there was keen rivalry among the intelligent 
and zealous commanders of the volunteer organizations as 
to who should get first choice. Wood's experience was what 
enabled us to equip ourselves in short order. There was 
another cavalry organization whose commander was at the 



246 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

War Department about this time, and we had been eyeing 
him with much alertness as a rival. One day I asked him 
what his plans were about arming and drilling his troops, 
who were of precisely the type of our own men. He an- 
swered that he expected "to give each of the boys two 
revolvers and a lariat, and then just turn them loose." I 
reported the conversation to Wood, with the remark that 











k "^^M^ft^i " ^SaBtll 






m^^ 




L' ,^j^'>:''*'^^^^^^^^^H 


HMBI 


BHi 



Colonel Theodore Roosevelt and a Group of Rough Riders. 



we might feel ourselves safe from rivalry in that quarter; 
and safe we were. 

In trying to get the equipment I met with checks and 
rebuffs, and in return was the cause of worry and concern 
to various bureau chiefs who were unquestionably estimable 
men in their private and domestic relations, and who doubt- 
less had been good officers thirty years before, but who were 
as unfit for modern war as if they were so many smooth- 
bores. One fine old fellow did his best to persuade us to 



THE WAR OF AMERICA THE UNREADY 247 

take black powder rifles, explaining with paternal indulgence 
that no one yet really knew just what smokeless powder 
might do, and that there was a good deal to be said in favor 
of having smoke to conceal us from the enemy. I saw 
this pleasing theory actually worked out in practice later 
on, for the National Guard regiments with us at Santiago 
had black powder muskets, and the regular artillery black 
powder guns, and they really might almost as well have 
replaced these weapons by crossbows and mangonels. We 
succeeded, thanks to Wood, in getting the same cavalry 
carbines that were used by the regulars. We were de- 
termined to do this, not only because the weapons were good, 
but because this would in all probability mean that we were 
brigaded with the regular cavalry, which it was certain 
would be sent immediately to the front for the fighting. 

There was one worthy bureau chief who was continually 
refusing applications of mine as irregular. In each case I 
would appeal to Secretary Alger — who helped me in every 
way — - and get an order from him countenancing the irreg- 
ularity. For instance, I found out that as we were nearer 
the July date than the January date for the issuance of 
clothing, and as it had long been customary to issue the 
winter clothing in July, so as to give ample leisure for getting 
it to all the various posts, it was therefore solemnly pro- 
posed to issue this same winter clothing to us who were about 
to start for a summer campaign in the tropics. This would 
seem incredible to those who have never dealt with an inert 
officialdom, a red-tape bureaucracy, but such is the fact. I 
rectified this and got an order for khaki clothing. We were 
then told we would have to advertise thirty days for horses. 
This meant that we would have missed the Santiago expedi- 
tion. So I made another successful appeal to the Secretary. 
Other difficulties came up about wagons, and various articles, 
and in each case the same result followed. On the last 
occasion, when I came up in triumph with the needed order, 
the worried office head, who bore me no animosity, but who 
did feel that fate had been very unkind, threw himself back 
in his chair and exclaimed with a sigh: "Oh, dear! I had 
this office running in such good shape — and then along came 



248 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

the war and upset everything !" His feeling was that war 
was an illegitimate interruption to the work of the War 
Department. 

There were of course department heads and bureau chiefs 
and assistants who, in spite of the worthlessness of the system, 
and of the paralyzing conditions that had prevailed, remained 
first-class men. An example of these was Commissary- 
General Weston. His energy, activity, administrative 
efficiency, and common sense were supplemented by an 
eager desire to help everybody do the best that could be 
done. Both in Washington and again down at Santiago 
we owed him very much. When I was President, it was my 
good fortune to repay him in part our debt, which means 
the debt of the people of the country, by making him a 
major-general. 

The regiment assembled at San Antonio. When I reached 
there, the men, rifles, and horses, which were the essentials, 
were coming in fast, and the saddles, blankets, and the like 
were also accumulating. Thanks to Wood's exertions, 
when we reached Tampa we were rather better equipped than 
most of the regular regiments. We adhered strictly to 
field equipment, allowing no luxuries or anything else un- 
necessary, and so we were able to move off the field when 
ordered, with our own transportation, leaving nothingbehind. 

I suppose every man tends to brag about his regiment ; 
but it does seem to me that there never was a regiment 
better worth bragging about than ours. Wood was an 
exceptional commander, of great power, with a remarkable 
gift for organization. The rank and file were as fine natural 
fighting men as ever carried a rifle or rode a horse in any 
country or any age. We had a number of first-class young 
fellows from the East, most of them from colleges like Har- 
vard, Yale, and Princeton ; but the great majority of the 
men were Southwesterners, from the then territories of 
Oklahoma, Indian Territory, Arizona, and New Mexico. 
They were accustomed to the use of firearms, accustomed 
to taking care of themselves in the open ; they were intelli- 
gent and self-reliant ; they possessed hardihood and en- 
durance and physical prowess ; and, above all, they had 



THE WAR OF AMERICA THE UNREADY 249 

the fighting edge, the cool and resolute fighting temper. 
They went into the war with full knowledge, having deliber- 
ately counted the cost. In the great majority of cases each 
man was chiefly anxious to find out what he should do to 
make the regiment a success. They bought, first and last, 
about 800 copies of the cavalry drill regulations and studied 
them industriously. Such men were practically soldiers to 
start with, in all the essentials. It is small wonder that 
with them as material to work upon the regiment was raised, 
armed, equipped, drilled, sent on trains to Tampa, embarked, 
disembarked, and put through two victorious offensive — 
not defensive — fights in which a third of the officers and 
one-fifth of the men were killed or wounded, all within sixty 
days. It is a good record, and it speaks well for the men of 
the regiment; and it speaks well for Wood 

Wood was so busy getting the regiment ready that when I 
reached San Antonio he turned most of the drilling of it 
over to me. This was a piece of great good fortune for me, 
and I drilled the men industriously, mounted and unmounted. 
I had plenty to learn, and the men and the officers even 
more ; but we went at our work with the heartiest good will. 
We speedily made it evident that there was no room and no 
mercy for any man who shirked any duty, and we accom- 
plished good results. The fact is that the essentials of drill 
and work for a cavalry or an infantry regiment are easy to 
learn, which of course is not true for the artillery or the en- 
gineers or for the navy. The reason why it takes so long to 
turn the average civilized man into a good infantryman or 

^ To counterbalance the newspapers which ignorantly and indiscriminately 
praised all the volunteers there were others whose blame was of the same intelligent 
quality. The New York Evening Post, on June i8, gave expression to the follow- 
ing gloomy foreboding: "Competent observers have remarked that nothing more 
extraordinary has been done than the sending to Cuba of the First United States 
Volunteer Cavalry, known as the 'rough riders.' Organized but four weeks, barely 
given their full complement of officers, and only a week of regular drill, these men 
have been sent to the front before they have learned the first elements of soldiering 
and discipline, or have even become acquainted with their officers. In addition 
to all this, like the regular cavalry, they have been sent with only their carbines 
and revolvers to meet an enemy armed with long-range rifles. There have been 
few cases of such military cruelty in our military annals." A week or so after this 
not wholly happy prophecy was promulgated, the "cruelty" was consummated, 
first at Las Guasimas and then in the San Juan fighting. 



250 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

cavalryman is because it takes a long while to teach the 
average untrained man how to shoot, to ride, to march, to 
take care of himself in the open, to be alert, resourceful, 
cool, daring, and resolute, to obey quickly, as well as to be 
willing, and to fit himself, to act on his own responsibility. 
If he already possesses these qualities, there is very little 
difficulty in making him a soldier; all the drill that is neces- 
sary to enable him to march and to fight is of a simple charac- 
ter. Parade ground and barrack square maneuvers are of 
no earthly consequence in real war. When men can readily 
change from line to column, and column to line, can form 
front in any direction, and assemble and scatter, and can do 
these things with speed and precision, they have a fairly good 
grasp of the essentials. When our regiment reached Tampa it 
could already be handled creditably at fast gaits, and both 
in mass and extended formations, mounted and dismounted. 
I had served three years in the New York National Guard, 
finally becoming a captain. This experience was invaluable 
to me. It enabled me at once to train the men in the simple 
drill without which they would have been a mob ; for al- 
though the drill requirements are simple, they are also 
absolutely indispensable. But if I had believed that my 
experience in the National Guard had taught me all that 
there was to teach about a soldier's career, it would have been 
better for me not to have been in it at all. There were in 
the regiment a number of men who had served in the National 
Guard, and a number of others who had served in the Regular 
Army. Some of these latter had served in the field in the 
West under campaign conditions, and were accustomed to 
long marches, privation, risk, and unexpected emergencies. 
These men were of the utmost benefit to the regiment. 
They already knew their profession, and could teach and 
help the others. But if the man had merely served in a 
National Guard regiment, or in the Regular Army at some 
post in a civilized country where he learned nothing except 
what could be picked up on the parade ground, in the bar- 
racks, and in practice marches of a few miles along good 
roads, then it depended purely upon his own good sense 
whether he had been helped or hurt by the experience. 



THE WAR OF AMERICA THE UNREADY 251 

If he realized that he had learned only five per cent of his pro- 
fession, that there remained ninety-five per cent to accom- 
plish before he would be a good soldier, why, he had prof- 
ited immensely. 

To start with five per cent handicap was a very great 
advantage ; and if the man was really a good man, he could 
not be overtaken. But if the man thought that he had 
learned all about the profession of a soldier because he had 
been in the National Guard or in the Regular Army under 
the conditions I have described, then he was actually of less 
use than if he had never had any military experience at 
all. Such a man was apt to think that nicety of alignment, 
precision in wheeling, and correctness in the manual of arms 
were the ends of training and the guarantees of good soldier- 
ship, and that from guard mounting to sentry duty every- 
thing in war was to be done in accordance with what he 
had learned in peace. As a matter of fact, most of what he 
had learned was never used at all, and some of it had to 
be unlearned. The one thing, for instance, that a sentry 
ought never to do in an actual campaign is to walk up and 
down a line where he will be conspicuous. His business is to 
lie down somewhere off a ridge crest where he can see any 
one approaching, but where a man approaching cannot 
see him. As for the ceremonies, during the really hard part 
of a campaign only the barest essentials are kept. 

Almost all of the junior regular officers, and many of the 
senior regular officers, were fine men. But, through no fault 
of their own, had been forced to lead lives that fairly para- 
lyzed their efficiency when the strain of modern war came 
on them. The routine elderly regular officer who knew 
nothing whatever of modern war was in most respects nearly 
as worthless as a raw recruit. The positions and commands 
prescribed in the text-books were made into fetishes by some 
of these men, and treated as if they were the ends, instead 
the not always important means by which the ends were 
to be achieved. In the Cuban fighting, for instance, it 
would have been folly for me to have taken my place in 
the rear of the regiment, the canonical text-book position. 
My business was to be where I could keep most command 



252 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

over the regiment, and, in a rough-and-tumble, scrambling 
fight in thick jungle, this had to depend upon the course 
of events, and usually meant that I had to be at the front. I 
saw in that fighting more than one elderly regimental com- 
mander who unwittingly rendered the only service he could 
render to his regiment by taking up his proper position 
several hundred yards in the rear when the fighting began ; 
for then the regiment disappeared in the jungle, and for 
its good fortune the commanding officer never saw it again 
until long after the fight was over. 

After one Cuban fight a lieutenant-colonel of the regulars, 
in command of a regiment, who had met with just such an 
experience and had rejoined us at the front several hours 
after the close of the fighting, asked me what my men were 
doing when the fight began. I answered that they were 
following in trace in column of twos, and that the instant 
the shooting began I deployed them as skirmishers on both 
sides of the trail. He answered triumphantly, "You can't 
deploy men as skirmishers from column formation"; to 
which I responded, "Well, I did, and, what is more, if any 
captain had made any difficulty about it, I would have 
sent him to the rear." My critic was quite correct from the 
parade ground standpoint. The prescribed orders at that 
time were to deploy the column first into a line of squads 
at correct intervals, and then to give an order which, if 
my memory serves correctly, ran: "As skirmishers, by the 
right and left flanks, at six yards, take intervals, march." 
The order I really gave ran more like this : "Scatter out to 
the right there, quick, you ! scatter to the left ! look alive, 
look alive !" And they looked alive, and they scattered, 
and each took advantage of cover, and forward went the line. 

Now I do not wish what I have said to be misunderstood. 
If ever we have a great war, the bulk of our soldiers will not be 
men who have had any opportunity to train soul and mind 
and body so as to meet the iron needs of an actual campaign. 
Long continued and faithful drill will alone put these men in 
shape to begin to do their duty, and failure to recognize this 
on the part of the average man will mean laziness and folly 
and not the possession of efficiency. Moreover, if men 



THE WAR OF AMERICA THE UNREADY 253 

have been trained to believe, for instance, that they can 
"arbitrate questions of vital interest and national honor," if 
they have been brought up with flabbiness of moral fiber 
as well as flabbiness of physique, then there will be need of 
long and laborious and faithful work to give the needed 
tone to mind and body. But if the men have in them the 
right stuff, it is not so very difficult. 

At San Antonio we entrained for Tampa. In various 
sociological books by authors of Continental Europe, 
there are jeremiads as to the way in which service in the 
great European armies, with their minute and machine-like 
efficiency and regularity, tends to dwarf the capacity for 
individual initiativ^e among the officers and men. There 
is no such danger for any officer or man of a volunteer 
organization in America when our country, with playful 
light-heartedness, has pranced into war without making any 
preparation for it. I know no larger or finer field for the 
display of an advanced individualism than that which 
opened before us as we went from San Antonio to Tampa, 
camped there, and embarked on a transport for Cuba. 
Nobody ever had any definite information to give us, 
and whatever information we unearthed on our own account 
was usually wrong. Each of us had to show an alert and 
not overscrupulous self-reliance in order to obtain food for 
his men, provender for his horses, or transportation of any 
kind for any object. One lesson early impressed on me was 
that if I wanted anything to eat it was wise to carry it 
with me ; and if any new war should arise, I would earnestly 
advise the men of every volunteer organization always to 
proceed upon the belief that their supplies will not turn up, 
and to take every opportunity of getting food for themselves. 

Tampa was a scene of the wildest confusion. There were 
miles of tracks loaded with cars of the contents of which 
nobody seemed to have any definite knowledge. General 
Miles, who was supposed to have supervision over everything, 
and General Shafter, who had charge of the expedition, were 
both there. But, thanks to the fact that nobody had had 
any experience in handling even such a small force as ours — 
about 17,000 men — there was no semblance of order. 



254 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

Wood and I were bound that we should not be left behind 
when the expedition started. When we were finally in- 
formed that it was to leave next morning, we were ordered 
to go to a certain track to meet a train. We went to the 
track, but the train never came. Then we were sent to 
another track to meet another train. Again it never came. 
However, we found a coal train, of which we took possession, 
and the conductor, partly under duress and partly in a spirit 
of friendly helpfulness, took us down to the quay. 

All kinds of other organizations, infantry and cavalry, 
regular and volunteer, were arriving at the quay and wander- 
ing around it, and there was no place where we could get any 
specific information as to what transport we were to have. 
Finally Wood was told to "get any ship you can get which is 
not already assigned." He borrowed without leave a small 
motor boat, and commandeered the transport Yucatan. 
When asked by the captain what his authority was, he 
reported that he was acting "by orders of General Shafter," 
and directed the ship to be brought to the dock. He had 
already sent me word to be ready, as soon as the ship touched 
the pier, to put the regiment aboard her. I found that she 
had already been assigned to a regular regiment, and to 
another volunteer regiment, and as It was evident that not 
more than half of the men assigned to her could possibly get on, 
I was determined that we should not be among the men left 
off. The volunteer regiment offered a comparatively easy 
problem. I simply marched my men past them to the 
allotted place and held the gangway With the regulars 
I had to be a little more diplomatic, because their com- 
mander, a lieutenant-colonel, was my superior In rank, 
and also doubtless knew his rights. He sent word to me to 
make way, to draw my regiment off to one side, and let his 
take possession of the gangway. I could see the transport 
coming in, and could dimly make out Wood's figure thereon. 
Accordingly I played for time. I sent respectful requests 
through his officers to the commander of the regulars, en- 
tered Into parleys, and made protestations, until the trans- 
port got near enough so that by yelling at the top of my 
voice I was able to get into a — highly constructive — com- 



THE WAR OF AMERICA THE UNREADY 255 

munlcation with Wood. What he was saying I had no 
idea, but he was evidently speaking, and on my own re- 
sponsibility I translated it into directions to hold the gang- 
way, and so informed the regulars that I was under the orders 
of my superior and of a ranking officer, and — to my great 
regret, etc., etc. — could not give way as they desired. 
As soon as the transport was fast we put our men aboard at 
the double. Half of the regular regiment got on, and the other 
half and the other volunteer regiment went somewhere else. 

We were kept several days on the transport, which was 
jammed with men, so that it was hard to move about on 
the deck. Then the fleet got under way, and we steamed 
slowly down to Santiago. Here we disembarked, higgledy- 
piggledy, just as we had embarked. Different parts of 
different outfits were jumbled together, and it was no light 
labor afterwards to assemble the various batteries. For 
instance, one transport had guns, and another the locks for 
the guns ; the two not getting together for several days after 
one of them had been landed. Soldiers went here, pro- 
visions there ; and who got ashore first largely depended upon 
individual activity. Fortunately for us, my former naval 
aide, when I had been Assistant Secretary of the Navy, 
Lieutenant-Commander Sharp, a first-class fellow, was there 
in command of a little ship to which I had succeeded in 
getting him appointed before I left the Navy Department. 
He gave us a black pilot, who took our transport right in 
shore, the others following like a flock of sheep ; and we 
disembarked with our rifles, ammunition belts, and not 
much else. In theory it was out of our turn, but if we had 
not disembarked then, Heaven only knows when our turn 
would have come, and we did not intend to be out of the 
fighting if we could help it. I carried some food in my 
pockets, and a light waterproof coat, which was my sole 
camp equipment for the next two or three days. Twenty- 
four hours after getting ashore we marched from Daiquiri, 
where we had landed, to Siboney, also on the coast, reaching 
it during a terrific downpour of rain. When this was over, 
we built a fire, dried our clothes, and ate whatever we had 
brought with us. 



256 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

We were brigaded with the First and Tenth Regular 
Cavalry, under Brigadier-General Sam Young. He was a 
fine type of the American regular. Like General Chaffee, 
another of the same type, he had entered the army in the 
Civil War as a private. Later, when I was President, it 
was my good fortune to make each of them in succession 
Lieutenant-General of the army of the United States. When 
General Young retired and General Chaffee was to take his 
place, the former sent to the latter his three stars to wear on 
his first official presentation, with a note that they were from 
"Private Young to Private Chaffee." The two fine old 
fellows had served in the ranks, one in the cavalry, one in 
the infantry, in their golden youth, in the days of the great 
war nearly half a century before ; each had grown gray in a 
lifetime of honorable service under the flag, and each closed 
his active career in command of the army. General Young 
was one of the few men who had given and taken wounds with 
the saber. He was an old friend of mine, and when in 
Washington before starting for the front he told me that if 
we got in his brigade he would put us into the fighting all 
right. He kept his word. 

General Young had actively superintended getting his 
two regular regiments, or at least a squadron of each, off 
the transports, and late that night he sent us word that he 
had received permission to move at dawn and strike the 
Spanish advance position. He directed us to move along 
a ridge trail with our two squadrons (one squadron having 
been left at Tampa), while with the two squadrons of regulars, 
one of the First and one of the Tenth, under his personal 
supervision, he marched up the valley trail. Accordingly 
Wood took us along the hill trail early next morning, till 
we struck the Spaniards, and began our fight just as the 
regulars began the fight in the valley trail. 

It was a mountainous country covered with thick jungle, 
a most confusing country, and I had an awful time trying 
to get into the fight and trying to do what was right when in 
it ; and all the while I was thinking that I was the only man 
who did not know what I was about, and that all the others 
did — whereas, as I found out later, pretty much everybody 



THE WAR OF AMERICA THE UNREADY 257 

else was as much in the dark as I was. There was no sur- 
prise ; we struck the Spaniards exactly where we had 
expected ; then Wood halted us and put us into the fight 
deliberately and in order. He ordered us to deploy alter- 
nately by troops to the right and left of the trail, giving our 
senior major, Brodie, a West Pointer and as good a soldier 
as ever wore a uniform, the left wing, while I took the right 
wing. I was told if possible to connect with the regulars who 
were on the right. In theory this was excellent, but as 
the jungle was very dense the first troop that deployed to 
the right vanished forthwith, and I never saw it again until 
the fight was over — having a frightful feeling meanwhile 
that I might be court-martialed for losing it. The next 
troop deployed to the left under Brodie. Then the third 
came along, and I started to deploy it to the right as before. 

By the time the first platoon had gotten into the jungle 
I realized that it likewise would disappear unless I kept 
hold of it. I managed to keep possession of the last platoon. 
One learns fast in a fight, and I marched this platoon and my 
next two troops in column through the jungle without any 
attempt to deploy until we got on the firing line. This 
sounds simple. But it was not. I did not know when 
I had gotten on the firing line ! I could hear a good deal 
of firing, some over to my right at a good distance, and the 
rest to the left and ahead. I pushed on, expecting to strike 
the enemy somewhere between. 

Soon we came to the brink of a deep valley. There was a 
good deal of cracking of rifles way off in front of us, but as 
they used smokeless powder we had no idea as to exactly 
where they were, or who they were shooting at. Then it 
dawned on us that we were the target. The bullets began 
to come overhead, making a sound like the ripping of a silk 
dress, with sometimes a kind of pop ; a few of my men fell, 
and I deployed the rest, making them lie down and get 
behind trees. Richard Harding Davis was with us, and as 
we scanned the landscape with our glasses it was he who 
first pointed out to us some Spaniards in a trench some 
three-quarters of a mile off. It was difficult to make them 
out. There were not many of them. However, we finally 
s 



258 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

did make them out, and we could see their conical hats, for 
the trench was a poor one. We advanced, firing at them, 
and drove them off. 

What to do then I had not an idea. The country in 
front fell away into a very difficult jungle-filled valley. 
There was nothing but jungle all around, and if I advanced 
I was afraid I might get out of touch with everybody and 
not be going in the right direction. Moreover, as far as 
I could see, there was now nobody in front who was shooting 
at us, although some of the men on my left insisted that 
our own men had fired into us — an allegation which I soon 
found was almost always made in such a fight, and which 
in this case was not true. At this moment some of the 
regulars appeared across the ravine on our right. The first 
thing they did was to fire a volley at us, but one of our first 
sergeants went up a tree ahd waved a guidon at them and 
they stopped. Firing was still going on to our left, however, 
and I was never more puzzled to know what to do. I did 
not wish to take my men out of their position without 
orders, for fear that I might thereby be leaving a gap if there 
was a Spanish force which meditated an offensive return. 
On the other hand, it did not seem to me that I had been 
doing enough fighting to justify my existence, and there was 
obviously fighting going on to the left. I remember that 
I kept thinking of the refrain of the fox-hunting song, "Here's 
to every friend who struggled to the end"; in the hunting 
field I had always acted on this theory, and, no matter how 
discouraging appearances might be, had never stopped 
trying to get in at the death until the hunt was actually 
over; and now that there was work, and not play, on hand, 
I intended to struggle as hard as I knew how not to be left 
out of any fighting into which I could, with any possible 
propriety, get. 

So I left my men where they were and started off at a 
trot toward where the firing was, with a couple of orderlies 
to send back for the men in case that proved advisable. 
Like most tyros, I was wearing my sword, which in thick 
jungle now and then got between my legs — from that day 
on it always went corded in the baggage. I struck the 



THE WAR OF AMERICA THE UNREADY 259 

trail, and began to pass occasional dead men. Pretty 
soon I reached Wood and found, much to my pleasure, that 
I had done the right thing, for as I came up word was 
brought to him that Brodie had been shot, and he at once 
sent me to take charge of the left wing. It was more open 
country here, and at least I was able to get a glimpse of my 
own men and exercise some control over them. There 
was much firing going on, but for the life of me I could not 
see any Spaniards, and neither could any one else. Finally 
we made up our minds that they were shooting at us from a 
set of red-tiled ranch buildings a good way in front, and 
these I assaulted, finally charging them. Before we came 
anywhere near, the Spaniards, who, as it proved, really 
were inside and around them, abandoned them, leaving a 
few dead men. 

By the time I had taken possession of these buildings all 
firing had ceased everywhere. I had not the faintest idea what 
had happened : whether the fight was over ; or whether this 
was merely a lull in the fight ; or where the Spaniards were ; 
or whether we might be attacked again ; or whether we ought 
ourselves to attack somebody somewhere else. I got my 
men in order and sent out small parties to explore the 
ground in front, who returned without finding any foe. 
(By this time, as a matter of fact, the Spaniards were in 
full retreat.) Meanwhile I was extending my line so as to 
get into touch with our people on the right. Word was 
brought to me that Wood had been shot — which fortunately 
proved not to be true — and as, if this were so, it meant 
that I must take charge of the regiment, I moved over 
personally to inquire. Soon I learned that he was all 
right, that the Spaniards had retreated along the main road, 
and that Colonel Wood and two or three other officers 
were a short distance away. Before I reached them I 
encountered a captain of the Ninth Cavalry, very glum 
because his troopers had not been up in time to take part in 
the fight, and he congratulated me — with visible effort ! — 
upon my share in our first victory. I thanked him cor- 
dially, not confiding in him that till that moment I myself 
knew exceeding little about the victory ; and proceeded to 



26o THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

where Generals Wheeler, Lawton, and Chaffee, who had 
just come up, in company with Wood, were seated on a bank. 
They expressed appreciation of the way that I had handled 
my troops, first on the right wing and then on the left ! 




Copyright, by Underwood & Underwood. 

General Joseph Wheeler, in the Foregrond, Commander of the Left Wing of 
THE Army before San Juan Hill. From Left to Right : Major George M. 
Dunn, Colonel Brodie, Chaplain Brown, Leonard Wood, and Colonel 
Theodore Roosevelt. 



As I was quite prepared to find I had committed some awful 
sin, I did my best to accept this in a nonchalant manner, 
and not to look as relieved as I felt. As throughout the 
morning I had preserved a specious aspect of wisdom, 
and had commanded first one and then the other wing, the 



THE WAR OF AMERICA THE UNREADY 261 

fight was really a capital thing for me, for practically all 
the men had served under my actual command, and thence- 
forth felt an enthusiastic belief that I would lead them 
aright. 

It was a week after this skirmish before the army made 
the advance on Santiago. Just before this occurred General 
Young was stricken down with fever. General Wheeler, 
who had commanded the Cavalry Division, was put in 
general charge of the left wing of the army, which fought 
before the city itself. Brigadier-General Sam Sumner, 
an excellent officer, who had the second cavalry brigade, 
took command of the cavalry division, and Wood took 
command of our brigade, while, to my intense delight, 
I got my regiment. I therefore had command of the regi- 
ment before the stiffest fighting occurred. Later, when 
Wood was put In command in Santiago, I became the 
brigade commander. 

Late In the evening we camped at El Poso. There were 
two regular officers, the brigade commander's aides, Lieu- 
tenants A. L. Mills and W. E. Shipp, who were camped by 
our regiment. Each of my men had food In his haversack, 
but I had none, and I would have gone supperless to bed 
If Mills and Shipp had not given me out of their scanty 
stores a big sandwich, which I shared with my orderly, 
who also had nothing. Next morning my body servant 
Marshall, an ex-soldier of the Ninth (Colored) Cavalry, a 
fine and faithful fellow, had turned up and I was able in my 
turn to ask Mills and Shipp, who had eaten all their food 
the preceding evening, to take breakfast with me. A few 
hours later gallant Shipp was dead, and Mills, an exception- 
ally able officer, had been shot through the head from side to 
side, just back of the eyes ; yet he lived, although one eye 
was blinded, and before I left the Presidency I gave him 
his commission as Brigadier-General. 

Early in the morning our artillery began firing from the 
hill-crest immediately in front of where our men were 
camped. Several of the regiment were killed and wounded 
by the shrapnel of the return fire of the Spaniards. One 
of the shrapnel bullets fell on my wrist and raised a bump 



262 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

as big as a hickory nut, but did not even break the skin. 
Then we were marched down from the hill on a muddy road 
through thick jungle towards Santiago. The heat was 
great, and we strolled into the fight with no definite idea on 
the part of any one as to what we were to do or what would 
happen. There was no plan that our left wing was to make 
a serious fight that day ; and as there were no plans, it 
was naturally exceedingly hard to get orders, and each of 
us had to act largely on his own responsibility. 

Lawton's infantry division attacked the little village of 
El Caney, some miles to the right. Kent's infantry division 
and Sumner's dismounted cavalry division were supposed 
to retain the Spanish army in Santiago until Lawton had 
captured El Caney. Spanish towns and villages, however, 
with their massive buildings, are natural fortifications, as 
the French found in the Peninsular War, and as both the 
French and our people found in Mexico. The Spanish 
troops in El Caney fought very bravely, as did the Spanish 
troops in front of us, and it was late in the afternoon before 
Lawton accomplished his task. 

Meanwhile we of the left wing had by degrees become 
involved in a fight which toward the end became not even 
a colonel's fight, but a squad leader's fight. The cavalry 
division was put at the head of the line. We were told to 
march forward, cross a little river in front, and then, turning 
to the right, march up alongside the stream until we con- 
nected with Lawton. Incidentally, this movement would 
not have brought us into touch with Lawton in any event. 
But we speedily had to abandon any thought of carrying it 
out. The maneuver brought us within fair range of the 
Spanish intrenchments along the line of hills which we called 
the San Juan Hills, because on one of them was the San 
Juan blockhouse. On that day my regiment had the lead 
of the second brigade, and we marched down the trail 
following in trace behind the first brigade. Apparently the 
Spaniards could not make up their minds what to do as the 
three regular regiments of the first brigade crossed and de- 
filed along the other bank of the stream, but when our regi- 
ment was crossing they began to fire at us. 



THE WAR OF AMERICA THE UNREADY 263 

Under this flank fire it soon became impossible to continue 
the march. The first brigade halted, deployed, and finally 
began to fire back. Then our brigade was halted. From 
time to time some of our men would fall, and I sent repeated 
word to the rear to try to get authority to attack the hills in 
front. Finally General Sumner, who was fighting the divi- 
sion in fine shape, sent word to advance. The word was 
brought to me by Mills, who said that my orders were to 
support the regulars in the assault on the hills, and that my 
objective would be the red-ti ed ranch-house in front, on a 
hill which we afterwards christened Kettle Hill. I mention 
Mills saying this because it was exactly the kind of definite 
order the giving of which does so much to insure success in 
a fight, as it prevents all obscurity as to what is to be done. 
The order to attack did not reach the first brigade until 
after we ourselves reached it, so that at first there was doubt 
on the part of their officers whether they were at liberty 
to join in the advance. 

I had not enjoyed the Guasimas fight at all, because I 
had been so uncertain as to what I ought to do. But the 
San Juan fight was entirely difi"erent. The Spaniards had a 
hard position to attack, it is true, but we could see them, 
and I knew exactly how to proceed. I kept on horseback, 
merely because I found it difficult to convey orders along 
the line, as the men were lying down ; and it is always hard to 
get men to start when they cannot see whether their com- 
rades are also going. So I rode up and down the lines, keep- 
ing them straightened out, and gradually worked through line 
after line until I found myself at the head of the regiment. 
By the time I had reached the lines of the regulars of the 
first brigade I had come to the conclusion that it was silly 
to stay in the valley firing at the hills, because that was 
really where we were most exposed, and that the thing to do 
was to try to rush the intrenchments. Where I struck the 
regulars there was no one of superior rank to mine, and 
after asking why they did not charge, and being answered 
that they had no orders, I said I would give the order. There 
was naturally a little reluctance shown by the elderly officer 
in command to accept my order, so I said, "Then let my men 



264 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

through, sir," and I marched through, followed by my 
grinning men. The younger officers and the enlisted men 
of the regulars jumped up and joined us. I waved my 
hat, and we went up the hill with a rush. Having taken it, 
we looked across at the Spaniards in the trenches under the 
San Juan blockhouse to our left, which Hawkins's brigade 
was assaulting. I ordered our men to open fire on the 
Spaniards in the trenches. 

Memory plays funny tricks in such a fight, where things 
happen quickly, and all kinds of mental images succeed 
one another in a detached kind of way, while the work goes 
on. As I gave the order in question there slipped through 
my mind Mahan's account of Nelson's orders that each ship 
as it sailed forward, if it saw another ship engaged with an 
enemy's ship, should rake the latter as it passed. When 
Hawkins's soldiers captured the blockhouse, I, very much 
elated, ordered a charge on my own hook to a line of hills 
still farther on. Hardly anybody heard this order, however; 
only four men started with me, three of whom were shot. 
I gave one of them, who was only wounded, my canteen 
of water, and ran back, much irritated that I had not been 
followed — which was quite unjustifiable, because I found 
that nobody had heard my orders. General Sumner had 
come up by this time, and I asked his permission to lead the 
charge. He ordered me to do so, and this time away we 
went, and stormed the Spanish intrenchments. There 
was some close fighting, and we took a few prisoners. We 
also captured the Spanish provisions, and ate them that 
night with great relish. One of the items was salted flying- 
fish, by the way. There were also bottles of wine, and jugs 
of fiery spirit, and as soon as possible I had these broken, 
although not before one or two of my men had taken too 
much liquor. Lieutenant Howze, of the regulars, an aide 
of General Sumner's, brought me an order to halt where 
I was ; he could not make up his mind to return until he had 
spent an hour or two with us under fire. The Spaniards 
attempted a counter-attack in the middle of the afternoon, 
but were driven back without efi^ort, our men laughing 
and cheering as they rose to fire ; because hitherto they 



THE WAR OF AMERICA THE UNREADY 265 

had been assaulting breastworks, or lying still under artillery 
fire, and they were glad to get a chance to shoot at the 
Spaniards in the open. We lay on our arms that night 
and as we were drenched with sweat, and had no blankets 
save a few we took from the dead Spaniards, we found even 
the tropic night chilly before morning came. 

During the afternoon's fighting, while I was the highest 
officer at our immediate part of the front. Captains Boughton 
and Morton of the regular cavalry, two as fine officers as 
any man could wish to have beside him in battle, came along 
the firing line to tell me that they had heard a rumor that 
we might fall back, and that they wished to record their 
emphatic protest against any such course. I did not believe 
there was any truth in the rumor, for the Spaniards were 
utterly incapable of any efi"ective counter-attack. However, 
late in the evening, after the fight. General Wheeler visited 
us at the front, and he told me to keep myself in readiness, 
as at any moment it might be decided to fall back. Jack 
Greenway was beside me when General Wheeler was speak- 
ing. I answered, "Well, General, I really don't know whether 
we would obey an order to fall back. We can take that 
city by a rush, and if we have to move out of here at all 
I should be inclined to make the rush in the right direction." 
Greenway nodded an eager assent. The old General, after 
a moment's pause, expressed his hearty agreement, and said 
that he would see that there was no falling back. He had 
been very sick for a couple of days, but, sick as he was, he 
managed to get into the fight. He was a gamecock if every 
there was one, but he was in very bad physical shape on 
the day of the fight. H there had been any one in high 
command to supervise and press the attack that afternoon, 
we would have gone right into Santiago. In my part of 
the line the advance was halted only because we received 
orders not to move forward, but to stay on the crest of the 
captured hill and hold it. 

We are always told that three-o'clock-in-the-morning 
courage is the most desirable kind. Well, my men and the 
regulars of the cavalry had just that brand of courage. At 
about three o'clock on the morning after the first fight, 



266 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

shooting began in our front and there was an alarm of a 
Spanish advance. I was never more pleased than to see 
the way in which the hungry, tired, shabby men all jumped 
up and ran forward to the hill-crest, so as to be ready 
for the attack; which, however, did not come. As soon 
as the sun rose the Spaniards again opened upon us with 
artillery. A shell burst between Dave Goodrich and my- 
self, blacking us with powder, and killing and wounding 
several of the men immediately behind us. 

Next day the fight turned into a siege ; there were some 
stirring incidents ; but for the most part it was trench work. 
A fortnight later Santiago surrendered. Wood won his 
brigadier-generalship by the capital way in which he handled 
his brigade in the fight, and in the following siege. He was 
put in command of the captured city; and in a few days 
I succeeded to the command of the brigade. 

The health of the troops was not good, and speedily 
became very bad. There was some dysentery, and a little 
yellow fever; but most of the trouble was from a severe 
form of malarial fever. The Washington authorities had 
behaved better than those in actual command of the expedi- 
tion at one crisis. Immediately after the first days' fighting 
around Santiago the latter had hinted by cable to Washington 
that they might like to withdraw, and Washington had em- 
phatically vetoed the proposal. I record this all the more 
gladly because there were not too many gleams of good sense 
shown in the home management of the war ; although I 
wish to repeat that the real blame for this rested primarily 
with us ourselves, the people of the United States, who had 
for years pursued in military matters a policy that rendered 
it certain that there would be ineptitude and failure in 
high places if ever a crisis came. After the siege the people 
in Washington showed no knowledge whatever of the con- 
ditions around Santiago, and proposed to keep the army 
there. This would have meant that at least three-fourths of 
the men would either have died or have been permanently 
invalided, as a virulent form of malaria was widespread, 
and there was a steady growth of dysentery and other 
complaints. No object of any kind was to be gained by 



THE WAR OF AA4ERICA THE UNREADY 267 

keeping the army in or near the captured city. General 
Shafter tried his best to get the Washington authorities to 
order the army home. As he failed to accomplish anything, 
he called a council of the division and brigade commanders 
and the chief medical officers to consult over the situation. 

Although I had command of a brigade, I was only a colonel, 
and so I did not intend to attend, but the General informed 
me that I was particularly wanted, and accordingly I went. 
At the council General Shafter asked the medical authorities 
as to conditions, and they united in informing him that they 
were very bad, and were certain to grow much worse ; and 
that in order to avoid frightful ravages from disease, chiefly 
due to malaria, the army should be sent back at once to some 
part of the northern United States. The General then ex- 
plained that he could not get the War Department to under- 
stand the situation ; that he could not get the attention of 
the public ; and that he felt that there should be some au- 
thoritative publication which would make the War Depart- 
ment take action before it was too late to avert the ruin of the 
army. All who were in the room expressed their agreement. 

Then the reason for my being present came out. It was 
explained to me by General Shafter, and by others, that 
as I was a volunteer officer and intended immediately to 
return to civil life, I could afford to take risks which the 
regular army men could not afford to take and ought not to 
be expected to take, and that therefore I ought to make 
the publication in question ; because to incur the hostility 
of the War Department would not make any difference to me, 
whereas it would be destructive to the men in the regular 
army, or to those who hoped to get into the regular army. 
I thought this true, and said I would write a letter or make 
a statement which could then be published. Brigadier- 
General Ames, who was in the same postion that I was, 
also announced that he would make a statement. 

When I left the meeting it was understood that I was to 
make my statement as an interview in the press ; but Wood, 
who was by that time Brigadier-General commanding 
the city of Santiago, gave me a quiet hint to put my state- 
ment in the form of a letter to General Shafter, and this I 



268 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

accordingly did. When I had written my letter, the corre- 
spondent of the Associated Press, who had been informed 
by others of what had occurred, accompanied me to General 
Shafter. I presented the letter to General Shafter, who 
waved it away and said: "I don't want to take it; do 
whatever you wish with it." I, however, insisted on handing 
it to him, whereupon he shoved It toward the correspondent 
of the Associated Press, who took hold of it, and I released 
my hold. General Ames made a statement direct to the 
correspondent, and also sent a cable to the Assistant Secre- 
tary of the Navy at Washington, a copy of which he gave 
to the correspondent. By this time the other division and 
brigade commanders who were present felt that they had 
better take action themselves. They united in a round 
robin to General Shafter, which General Wood dictated, 
and which was signed by Generals Kent, Bates, Chaffee, 
Sumner, Ludlow, Ames, and Wood, and by myself. General 
Wood handed this to General Shafter, and it was made 
public by General Shafter precisely as mine was made 
public.^ Later I was much amused when General Shafter 
stated that he could not imagine how my letter and the round 
robin got out ! When I saw this statement, I appreciated 
how wise Wood had been in hinting to me not to act on the 
suggestion of the General that I should make a statement to 
the newspapers, but to put my statement in the form of a 
letter to him as my superior officer, a letter which I de- 
livered to him. Both the letter and the round robin were 
written at General Shafter's wish, and at the unanimous 
suggestion of all the commanding and medical officers of 
the Fifty Army Corps, and both were published by General 
Shafter. 

In a regiment the prime need is to have fighting men ; 
the prime virtue is to be able and eager to fight with the 

'General Wood writes me: "The representative of the Associated Press was 
very anxious to get a copy of this despatch or see it, and I told him it was impossible 
for him to have it or see it. I then went in to General Shafter and stated the case 
to him, handing him the despatch, saying, 'The matter is now in your hands.' He, 
General Shafter, then said, 'I don't care whether this gentleman has it or not,' 
and I left then. When I went back the General told me he had given the Press 
representative a copy of the despatch, and that he had gone to the office with it." 



THE WAR OF AMERICA THE UNREADY 269 

utmost effectiveness. I have never believed that this was 
incompatible with other virtues. On the contrary, while 
there are of course exceptions, I believe that on the average 
the best fighting men are also the best citizens. I do not 
believe that a finer set of natural soldiers than the men of 
my regiment could have been found anywhere, and they 
were first-class citizens in civil life also. One fact may per- 
haps be worthy of note. Whenever we were in camp and 
so fixed that we could have regular meals, we used to have 
a general officers' mess, over which I of course presided. 
During our entire service there was never a foul or inde- 
cent word uttered at the oflftcers' mess — I mean this literally ; 
and there was very little swearing — although now and then 
in the fighting, if there was a moment when swearing seemed 
to be the best method of reaching the heart of the matter, 
it was resorted to. 

The men I cared for most in the regiment were the men 
who did the best work; and therefore my liking for them 
was obliged to take the shape of exposing them to most 
fatigue and hardship, of demanding from them the greatest 
service, and of making them incur the greatest risk. Once 
I kept Greenway and Goodrich at work for forty-eight 
hours, without sleeping, and with very little food, fighting 
and digging trenches. I freely sent the men for whom I 
cared most, to where death might smite them ; and death 
often smote them — as it did the two best officers in 
my regiment, Allyn Capron and Bucky O'Neil. My men 
would not have respected me had I acted otherwise. Their 
creed was my creed. The life even of the most useful man, 
of the best citizen, is not to be hoarded if there be need to 
spend it. I felt, and feel, this about others ; and of course 
also about myself. This is one reason why I have always 
felt impatient contempt for the effort to abolish the death 
penalty on account of sympathy with criminals. I am 
willing to listen to arguments in favor of abolishing the 
death penalty so far as they are based purely on grounds of 
public expediency, although these arguments have never 
convinced me. But inasmuch as, without hesitation, in the 
performance of duty, I have again and again sent good and 



270 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY i 

gallant and upright men to die, it seems to me the height 
of a folly both mischievous and mawkish to contend that 
criminals who have deserved death should nevertheless be 
allowed to shirk it. No brave and good man can properly 
shirk death ; and no criminal who has earned death should j 
be allowed to shirk it. i 

One of the best men with our regiment was the British 
military attache, Captain Arthur Lee, an old friend. The j 
other military attaches were herded together at headquarters 
and saw little. Captain Lee, who had known me in Wash- 
ington, escaped and stayed with the regiment. We grew to 
feel that he was one of us, and made him an honorary member. 
There were two other honorary members. One was Richard 
Harding Davis, who was with us continually and who per- j 
formed valuable service on the fighting line. The other : 
was a regular officer, Lieutenant Parker, who had a battery of : 
gatlings. We were with this battery throughout the San ■ 
Juan fighting, and we grew to have the strongest admira- 
tion for Parker as a soldier and the strongest liking for 
him as a man. During our brief campaign we were closely i 
and intimately thrown with various regular officers of the 
type of Mills, Howze, and Parker. We felt not merely fond- 
ness for them as officers and gentlemen, but pride in them as 
Americans. It is a fine thing to feel that we have in the 
army and in the navy modest, efficient, gallant gentlemen of 
this type, doing such disinterested work for the honor of 
the flag and of the Nation. No American can overpay j 
the debt of gratitude we all of us owe to the officers and ' 
enlisted men of the army and of the navy. ] 

Of course with a regiment of our type there was much to 
learn both among the officers and the men. There were 
all kinds of funny incidents. One of my men, an ex-cow- 
puncher and former round-up cook, a very good shot and 
rider, got into trouble on the way down on the transport. 
He understood entirely that he had to obey the officers of 
his own regiment, but, like so many volunteers, or at least 
like so many volunteers of my regiment, he did not under- I 
stand that this obligation extended to officers of other regi- 
ments. One of the regular officers on the transport ordered 



THE WAR OF AMERICA THE UNREADY 271 

him to do something which he declined to do. When the 
officer told him to consider himself under arrest, he responded 
by offering to fight him for a trifling consideration. He was 
brought before a court martial which sentenced him to 
a year's imprisonment at hard labor with dishonorable 
discharge, and the major-general commanding the division 
approved the sentence. 

We were on the transport. There was no hard labor 
to do ; and the prison consisted of another cow-puncher who 
kept guard over him with his carbine, evidently divided in 
his feelings as to whether he would like most to shoot him or 
to let him go. When we landed, somebody told the prisoner 
that I intended to punish him by keeping him with the 
baggage. He at once came to me in great agitation, saying : 
" Colonel, they say you're going to leave me with the baggage 
when the fight is on. Colonel, if you do that, I will never 
show my face in Arizona again. Colonel, if you will let me 
go to the front, I promise I will obey any one you say ; 
any one you say, Colonel," with the evident feeling that, after 
this concession, I could not, as a gentleman, refuse his 
request. Accordingly I answered : " Shields, there is no one 
in this regiment more entitled to be shot than you are, and 
you shall go to the front." His gratitude was great, and 
he kept repeating, "I'll never forget this. Colonel, never." 
Nor did he. When we got very hard up, he would now and 
then manage to get hold of some flour and sugar, and 
would cook a doughnut and bring it round to me, and 
watch me with a delighted smile as I ate it. He behaved 
extremely well in both fights, and after the second one I had 
him formally before me and remitted his sentence — some- 
thing which of course I had not the slightest power to do, 
although at the time it seemed natural and proper to me. 

When we came to be mustered out, the regular officer who 
was doing the mustering, after all the men had been dis- 
charged, finally asked me where the prisoner was. I said, 
"What prisoner .^" He said, "The prisoner, the man who 
was sentenced to a year's imprisonment with hard labor and 
dishonorable discharge." I said, "Oh ! I pardoned him"; 
to which he responded, " I beg your pardon ; you did what ? " 



272 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

This made me grasp the fact that I had exceeded authority, 
and I could only answer, "Well, I did pardon him, anyhow, 
and he has gone with the rest"; whereupon the mustering- 
out officer sank back in his chair and remarked, "He was 
sentenced by a court martial, and the sentence was approved 
by the major-general commanding the division. You were 
a lieutenant-colonel, and you pardoned him. Well, it was 
nervy, that's all I'll say." 

The simple fact was that under the circumstances it was 
necessary for me to enforce discipline and control the 




On thk Firing LiNt. 



regiment, and therefore to reward and punish individuals in 
whatever way the exigencies demanded. I often explained 
to the men what the reasons for an order were, the first 
time it was issued, if there was any trouble on their part in 
understanding what they were required to do. They were 
very intelligent and very eager to do their duty, and I hardly 
ever had any difficulty the second time with them. If, 
however, there was the slightest willful shirking of duty or 
insubordination, I punished instantly and mercilessly, and 
the whole regiment cordially backed me up. To have 
punished men for faults and shortcomings which they had 
no opportunity to know were such would have been as unwise 
as to have permitted any of the occasional bad characters 



THE WAR OF AMERICA THE UNREADY 273 

to exercise the slightest Hcense. It was a regiment which 
was sensitive about its dignity and was very keenly alive to 
justice and to courtesy, but which cordially approved ab- 
sence of mollycoddling, insistence upon the performance 
of duty, and summary punishment of wrong-doing. 

In the final fighting at San Juan, when we captured one 
of the trenches. Jack Greenway had seized a Spaniard, 
and shortly afterwards I found Jack leading his captive 
round with a string. I told him to turn him over to a 
man who had two or three other captives, so that they should 
all be taken to the rear. It was the only time I ever saw 
Jack look aggrieved. "Why, Colonel, can't I keep him 
for myself .?" he asked, plaintively. I think he had an idea 
that as a trophy of his bow and spear the Spaniard would 
make a fine body servant. 

One reason that we never had the slightest trouble in the 
regiment was because, when we got down to hard pan, 
officers and men shared exactly alike. It is all right to have 
differences in food and the like in times of peace and plenty, 
when everybody is comfortable. But in really hard times 
officers and men must share alike if the best work is to be 
done. As long as I had nothing but two hardtacks, which 
was the allowance to each man on the morning after the 
San Juan fight, no one could complain ; but if I had had any 
private little luxuries the men would very naturally have 
realized keenly their own shortages. 

Soon after the Guasimas fight we were put on short 
commons ; and as I knew that a good deal of food had 
been landed and was on the beach at Siboney, I marched 
thirty or forty of the men down to see if I could not get some 
and bring it up. I finally found a commissary officer, 
and he asked me what I wanted, and I answered, anything 
he had. So he told me to look about for myself. I found 
a number of sacks of beans, I think about eleven hundred 
pounds, on the beach ; and told the officer that I wanted 
eleven hundred pounds of beans. He produced a book of 
regulations, and showed me the appropriate section and sub- 
division which announced that beans were issued only for 
the officers' mess. This did me no good, and I told him so. 



274 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

He said he was sorry, and I answered that he was not as 
sorry as I was. I then "studied on it," as Br'er Rabbit 
would say, and came back with a request for eleven hundred 
pounds of beans for the officers' mess. He said, "Why, 
Colonel, your officers can't eat eleven hundred pounds of 
beans," to which I responded, "You don't know what 
appetites my officers have." He then said he would send 
the requisition to Washington. I told him I was quite 
willing, so long as he gave me the beans. He was a good 
fellow, so we finally effected a working compromise — he 
got the requisition and I got the beans, although he warned 
me that the price would probably be deducted from my 
salary. 

Under some regulation or other only the regular supply 
trains were allowed to act, and we were supposed not to have 
any horses or mules in the regiment itself. This was very 
pretty in theory; but, as a matter of fact, the supply trains 
were not numerous enough. My men had a natural genius 
for acquiring horseflesh in odd ways, and I continually 
found that they had staked out in the brush various captured 
Spanish cavalry horses and Cuban ponies and abandoned 
commissary mules. Putting these together, I would organize 
a small pack train and work it industriously for a day or 
two, until they learned about it at headquarters and con- 
fiscated it. Then I would have to wait for a week or so 
until my men had accumulated some more ponies, horses, and 
mules, the regiment meanwhile living in plenty on what we 
had got before the train was confiscated. 

All of our men were good at accumulating horses, but with- 
in our own ranks I think we were inclined to award the palm 
to our chaplain. There was not a better man in the regi- 
ment than the chaplain, and there could not have been a 
better chaplain for our men. He took care of the sick and 
the wounded, he never spared himself, and he did every 
duty. In addition, he had a natural aptitude for acquiring 
mules, which made some admirer, when the regiment was dis- 
banded, propose that we should have a special medal 
struck for him, with, on the obverse, "A Mule passant and 
Chaplain regardant." After the surrender of Santiago, a 



THE WAR OF AMERICA THE UNREADY 275 

Philadelphia clergyman whom I knew came down to General 
Wheeler's headquarters, and after visiting him announced 
that he intended to call on the Rough Riders, because he 
knew their colonel. One of General Wheeler's aides, Lieu- 
tenant Steele, who liked us both individually and as a regi- 
ment, and who appreciated some of our ways, asked 
the clergyman, after he had announced that he knew 
Colonel Roosevelt, " But do you know Colonel Roosevelt's 
regiment?" "No," said the clergyman. "Very well, then, 
let me give you a piece of advice. When you go down 
to see the Colonel, don't let your horse out of your 
sight ; and if the chaplain is there, don't get off" the 
horse !" 

We came back to Montauk Point and soon after were 
disbanded. We had been in the service only a little over 
four months. There are no four months of my life to 
which I look back with more pride and satisfaction. I 
believe most earnestly and sincerely in peace, but as things 
are yet in this world the nation that cannot fight, the people 
that have lost the fighting edge, that have lost the virile 
virtues, occupy a position as dangerous as it is ignoble. 
The future greatness of America in no small degree depends 
upon the possession by the average American citizen of 
the qualities which my men showed when they served under 
me at Santiago. 

Moreover, there is one thing in connection with this war 
which it is well that our people should remember, our people 
who genuinely love the peace of righteousness, the peace of 
justice — and I would be ashamed to be other than a lover 
of the peace of righteousness and of justice. The true 
preachers of peace, who strive earnestly to bring nearer 
the day when peace shall obtain among all peoples, and 
who really do help forward the cause, are men who 
never hesitate to choose righteous war when it is the 
only alternative to unrighteous peace. These are the 
men who, like Dr. Lyman Abbott, have backed every 
genuine movement for peace in this country, and who 
nevertheless recognized our clear duty to war for the free- 
dom of Cuba. 



276 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY \ 

But there are other men who put peace ahead of righteous- '; 
ness, and who care so little for facts that they treat fantastic 
declarations for immediate universal arbitration as being 
valuable, instead of detrimental, to the cause they profess 
to champion, and who seek to make the United States im- [ 
potent for international good under the pretense of making j 
us impotent for international evil. All the men of this 
kind, and all of the organizations they have controlled, 
since we began our career as a nation, all put together, ' 
have not accomplished one hundredth part as much for both,' i 
peace and righteousness, have not done one hundredth part 
as much either for ourselves or for other peoples, as was 
accomplished by the people of the United States when they 
fought the war with Spain and with resolute good faith i 
and common sense worked out the solution of the problems j 
which sprang from the war. I 

Our army and navy, and above all our people, learned ! 
some lessons from the Spanish War, and applied them to our 
own uses. During the following decade the improvement 
in our navy and army was very great; not in material only, 
but also in personnel, and, above all, in the ability to handle 
our forces in good-sized units. By 1908, when our battle 1 
fleet steamed round the world, the navy had become in | 
every respect as fit a fighting instrument as any other navy 
in the world, fleet for fleet. Even in size there was but one i 
nation, England, which was completely out of our class ; j 
and in view of our relations with England and all the English- ' 
speaking peoples, this was of no consequence. Of our army, \ 
of course, as much could not be said. Nevertheless the 
improvement in efficiency was marked. Our artillery was 
still very inferior in training and practice to the artillery 
arm of any one of the great Powers such as Germany, France, \ 
or Japan — • a condition which we only then began to remedy. | 
But the workmanlike speed and efficiency with which the 
expedition of some 6000 troops of all arms was mobilized 
and transported to Cuba during the revolution of 1908 
showed that, as regards our cavalry and infantry, we had . 
at least reached the point where we could assemble and ] 
handle in first-rate fashion expeditionary forces. This is | 



THE WAR OF AMERICA THE UNREADY 277 

mighty little to boast of, for a Nation of our wealth and 
population ; it is not pleasant to compare it with the extraor- 
dinary feats of contemporary Japan and the Balkan peoples ; 
but, such as it is, it represents a long stride in advance 
over conditions as they were in 1898. 



APPENDIX A 



A MANLY LETTER 



There was a sequel to the "round robin" incident which caused 
a little stir at the moment; Secretary Alger had asked me to write 
him freely from time to time. Accordingly, after the surrender of 
Santiago, I wrote him begging that the cavalry division might 
be put into the Porto Rican fighting, preparatory to what we sup- 
posed would be the big campaign against Havana in the fall. 
In the letter I extolled the merits of the Rough Riders and of the 
Regulars, announcing with much complacency that each of our 
regiments was worth "three of the National Guard regiments, 
armed with their archaic black powder rifles." ^ Secretary Alger 
believed, mistakenly, that I had made public the round robin, and 
was naturally irritated, and I suddenly received from him a pub- 
lished telegram, not alluding to the round robin incident, but 
quoting my reference to the comparative merits of the cavalry 
regiments and the National Guard regiments and rebuking me for 
it. The publication of the extract from my letter was not cal- 
culated to help me secure the votes of the National Guard if I ever 
became a candidate for office. However, I did not mind the 
matter much, for I had at the time no idea of being a candidate 
for anything — while in the campaign I ate and drank and thought 
and dreamed regiment and nothing but regiment, until I got the 
brigade, and then I devoted all my thoughts to handling the 
brigade. Anyhow, there was nothing I could do about the matter. 

When our transport reached Montauk Point, an army officer 
came aboard and before doing anything else handed me a sealed 
letter from the Secretary of War which ran as follows : — 

War Department, 

Washington, 
August lo, 1898. 
Dear Col. Roosevelt : 

You have been a most gallant officer and in the battle before 
Santiago showed superb soldierly qualities. I would rather add 

1 I quote this sentence from memory ; it is substantially correct. 

278 



APPENDIX 279 

to, than detract from, the honors you have so fairly won, and I 
wish you all good things. In a moment of aggravation under 
great stress of feeling, first because I thought you spoke in a dis- 
paraging manner of the volunteers (probably without intent, but 
because of your great enthusiasm for your own men) and second 
that I believed your published letter would embarrass the Depart- 
ment I sent you a telegram which with an extract from a private 
letter of yours I gave to the press. I would gladly recall both if I 
could, but unable to do that I write you this letter which I hope you 
will receive in the same friendly spirit in which I send it. Come 
and see me at a very early day. No one will welcome you more 
heartily than I. 

Yours very truly, 

(Signed) R. A. Alger. 

I thought this a manly letter, and paid no more heed to the 
incident ; and when I was President, and General Alger was 
Senator from Michigan, he was my stanch friend and on most 
matters my supporter. 

APPENDIX B 

THE SAN JUAN FIGHT 

The San Juan fight took its name from the San Juan Hill or hills 
— I do not know whether the name properly belonged to a line of 
hills or to only one hill. 

To compare small things with large things, this was precisely as 
the Battle of Gettysburg took its name from the village of Gettys- 
burg, where only a small part of the fighting was done ; and the 
Battle of Waterloo from the village of Waterloo, where none of 
the fighting was done. When it became the political interest 
of certain people to endeavor to minimize my part in the Santiago 
fighting (which was merely like that of various other squadron, 
battalion and regimental commanders) some of my opponents 
laid great stress on the alleged fact that the cavalry did not charge 
up San Juan Hill. We certainly charged some hills ; but I did 
not ask their names before charging them. To say that the Rough 
Riders and the cavalry division, and among other people myself, 
were not in the San Juan fight is precisely like saying that the men 
who made Pickett's Charge, or the men who fought at Little Round 
Top and Gulps Hill, were not at Gettysburg; or that Picton and 
the Scotch Greys and the French and English guards were not at 



28o THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

Waterloo. The present Vice-President of the United States in the 
campaign last year was reported in the press as repeatedly saying 
that I was not in the San Juan fight. The documents following 
herewith have been printed for many years, and were accessible 
to him had he cared to know or to tell the truth. 

These documents speak for themselves. The first is the official 
report issued by the War Department. From this it will be seen 
that there were in the Santiago fighting thirty infantry and cav- 
alry regiments represented. Six of these were volunteer, of which 
one was the Rough Riders. The other twenty-four were regular 
regiments. The percentage of loss of our regiment was about 
seven times as great as that of the other five volunteer regiments. 
Of the twenty-four regular regiments, twenty-two suffered a smaller 
percentage of loss than we suffered. Two, the Sixth United States 
Infantry and the Thirteenth United States Infantry, suffered a 
slightly greater percentage of loss — twenty-six per cent and 
twenty-three per cent as against twenty-two per cent. 

(Congressional Record, 55th Congress, Third Session, 
Volume 32, Part II, Page 1250) 



NOMINATIONS BY THE PRESIDENT 

To be Colonel by Brevet 

Lieutenant-Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, First Volunteer Cav- 
alry, for gallantry in battle. La Guasima, Cuba, June 24, 1898. 

To be Brigadier-General by Brevet 

Lieutenant-Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, First Volunteer Cav- 
alry, for gallantry in battle, Santiago de Cuba, July i, 1898. 
(Nominated for brevet colonel, to rank from June 24, 1898.) 

Fort San Juan, Cuba, 
July 17, 1898. 

The Adjutant-General United States Army, 
Washington, D. C. 

(Through military channels) 

Sir : I have the honor to invite attention to the following list of 
officers and enlisted men who specially distinguished themselves 
in the action at Las Guasimas, Cuba, June 24, 1898. 



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APPENDIX 281 

These officers and men have been recommended for favorable 
consideration by their immediate commanding officers in their 
respective reports, and I would respectfully urge that favorable 
action be taken. 

OFFICERS 



i 



In First United States Volunteer Cavalry — Colonel Leonard 
Wood, Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt. 

Respectfully, 

Joseph Wheeler, 
Major-General United States Volunteers, Commanding. 

Headquarters Second Cavalry Brigade, 
Camp near Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, 
June 29, 1898. 

The Adjutant-General Cavalry Division. 

Sir : By direction of the major-general commanding the Cavalry 
Division, I have the honor to submit the following report of the 
engagement of a part of this brigade with the enemy at Guasimas, 
Cuba, on June 24th, accompanied by detailed reports from the 
regimental and other commanders engaged, and a list of the killed 
and wounded : 

I cannot speak too highly of the efficient manner in which 
Colonel Wood handled his regiment, and of his magnificent be- 
havior on the field. The conduct of Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt, 
as reported to me by my two aides, deserves my highest commenda- 
tion. Both Colonel Wood and Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt 
disdained to take advantage of shelter or cover from the enemy's 
fire while any of their men remained exposed to it — an error of 
judgment, but happily on the heroic side. 

Very respectfully, 

S. B. M. Young, 

Brigadier General United States Volunteers, Commanding. 



282 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

Headquarters First Division Second Army Corps 

Camp Mackenzie, Ga., 
December 30, 1898. 
Adjutant-General, 
Washington, D. C. 

Sir : I have the honor to recommend Hon. Theodore Roosevelt, 
late Colonel First United States Volunteer Cavalry, for a medal of 
honor, as a reward for conspicuous gallantry at the battle of San 
Juan, Cuba, on July i, 1898. 

Colonel Roosevelt by his example and fearlessness inspired his 
men, and both at Kettle Hill and the ridge known as San Juan he 
led his command in person. I was an eye-witness of Colonel 
Roosevelt's action. 

As Colonel Roosevelt has left the service, a Brevet Commission 
is of no particular value in his case. 

Very respectfully, 

Samuel S. Sumner, 
Major-General United States Volunteers. 



West Point, N. Y., 
December 17, 1898. 

My dear Colonel : I saw you lead the line up the first hill — 
you were certainly the first officer to reach the top — and through 
your efforts, and your personally jumping to the front, a line more 
or less thin, but strong enough to take it, was led by you to the San 
Juan or first hill. In this your life was placed in extreme jeopardy, 
as you may recall, and as it proved by the number of dead left in 
that vicinity. Captain Stevens, then of the Ninth Cavalry, now 
of the Second Cavalry, was with you, and I am sure he recalls your 
gallant conduct. After the line started on the advance from the 
first hill, I did not see you until our line was halted, under a most 
galling fire, at the extreme front, where you afterwards entrenched. 
I spoke to you there and gave instructions from General Sumner 
that the position was to be held and that there would be no further 
advance till further orders. You were the senior officer there, 
took charge of the line, scolded me for having my horse so high 
upon the ridge ; at the same time you were exposing yourself 
most conspicuously, while adjusting the line, for the example was 
necessary, as was proved when several colored soldiers — about 
eight or ten. Twenty-fourth Infantry, I think — started at a run 
to the rear to assist a wounded colored soldier, and you drew your 



APPENDIX 283 

revolver and put a short and effective stop to such apparent 
stampede — it quieted them. That position was hot, and now I 
marvel at your escaping there. . . . 

Very sincerely yours, 

Robert L. Howze. 

West Point, N. Y., 
December 17, 1898. 

I hereby certify that on July I, 1898, Colonel (then Lieutenant- 
Colonel) Theodore Roosevelt, First Volunteer Cavalry, distin- 
guished himself through the action, and on two occasions during 
the battle when I was an eye-witness, his conduct was most con- 
spicuous and clearly distinguished above other men, as follows : 

1. At the base of San Juan, or first hill, there was a strong wire 
fence, or entanglement, at which the line hesitated under a galling 
fire, and where the losses were severe. Colonel Roosevelt jumped 
through the fence and by his enthusiasm, his example and courage 
succeeded in leading to the crest of the hill a line sufficiently strong 
to capture it. In this charge the Cavalry Brigade suffered its 
greatest loss, and the Colonel's life was placed in extreme jeopardy, 
owing to the conspicuous position he took in leading the line, and 
being the first to reach the crest of that hill, while under heavy fire 
of the enemy at close range. 

2. At the extreme advanced position occupied by our lines. 
Colonel Roosevelt found himself the senior, and under his instruc- 
tions from General Sumner to hold that position. He displayed 
the greatest bravery and placed his life in extreme jeopardy by 
unavoidable exposure to severe fire while adjusting and strengthen- 
ing the line, placing the men in positions which afforded best pro- 
tection, etc., etc. His conduct and example steadied the men, and 
on one occasion by severe but unnecessary measures prevented a 
small detachment from stampeding to the rear. He displayed the 
most conspicuous gallantry, courage and coolness, in performing 
extraordinarily hazardous duty. 

Robert L. Howze, 
Captahi A. A. G., U. S. V. 
{First Lieutefiant Sixth United States Cavalry) 

To the Adjutant-General United States Army, 
Washington, D. C. 



284 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

Headquarters United States Military Academy, 

West Point, N. Y., 

April 5, 1899. 
Lieutenant-Colonel W. H. Carter, 

Assistant A dj ut ant-General United States Army, 
Washington, D. C. 

Sir: In compliance with the request, contained in your letter 
of April 30th, of the Board convened to consider the awarding of 
brevets, medals of honor, etc., for the Santiago Campaign, that I 
state any facts, within my knowledge as Adjutant-General of the 
Brigade in which Colonel Theodore Roosevelt served, to aid the 
Board in determining, in connection with Colonel Roosevelt's 
application for a medal of honor, whether his conduct at Santiago 
was such as to distinguish him above others, I have the honor to 
submit the following : 

My duties on July i, 1898, brought me in constant observation 
of and contact with Colonel Roosevelt from early morning until 
shortly before the climax of the assault of the Cavalry Division 
on the San Juan Hill — the so-called Kettle Hill. During this 
time, while under the enemy's artillery fire at El Poso, and while 
on the march from El Poso by the San Juan ford to the point from 
which his regiment moved to the assault — about two miles, the 
greater part under fire — Colonel Roosevelt was conspicuous above 
any others I observed in his regiment in the zealous performance 
of duty, in total disregard of his personal danger and in his eager- 
ness to meet the enemy. At El Poso, when the enemy opened 
on that place with artillery fire, a shrapnel bullet grazed and 
bruised one of Colonel Roosevelt's wrists. The incident did not 
lessen his hazardous exposure, but he continued so exposed until 
he had placed his command under cover. In moving to the assault 
of San Juan Hill, Colonel Roosevelt was most conspicuously brave, 
gallant and indifferent to his own safety. He, in the open, led his 
regiment; no officer could have set a more striking example to his 
men or displayed greater intrepidity. 

Very respectfully. 

Your obedient servant, 
A. L. Mills, 

Colonel United States Army, Superintendent. 



APPENDIX 285 

Headquarters Department of Santiago de Cuba, 

Santiago de Cuba, 
December 30, 1898. 

To the Adjutant-General, United States Army, 
Washington, D. C. 

Sir : I have the honor to make the following statement relative 
to the conduct of Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, late First United 
States Volunteer Cavalrv, during the assault upon San Juan Hill, 
July I, 1898. 

I have already recommended this officer for a medal of honor, 
which I understand has been denied him, upon the ground that 
my previous letter was too indefinite. I based my recommenda- 
tion upon the fact that Colonel Roosevelt, accompanied only by 
four or five men, led a very desperate and extremely gallant charge 
on San Juan Hill, thereby setting a splendid example to the troops 
and encouraging them to pass over the open country intervening 
between their position and the trenches of the enemy. In leading 
this charge, he started ofi" first, as he supposed, with quite a fol- 
lowing of men, but soon discovered that he was alone. He then 
returned and gathered up a few men and led them to the charge, 
as above stated. The charge in itself was an extremely gallant 
one, and the example set a most inspiring one to the troops in that 
part of the line, and while it is perfectly true that everybody finally 
went up the hill in good style, yet there is no doubt that the 
magnificent example set by Colonel Roosevelt had a very encourag- 
ing efi^ect and had great weight in bringing up the troops behind 
him. During the assault. Colonel Roosevelt was the first to 
reach the trenches in his part of the line and killed one of the enemy 
with his own hand. 

I earnestly recommend that the medal be conferred upon 
Colonel Roosevelt, for I believe that he in every way deserves it, 
and that his services on the day in question were of great value and 
of a most distinguished character. 

Very respectfully, 

Leonard Wood, 
Major-General, United States Volunteers. 
Commanding Department of Santiago de Cuba. 



286 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

HuNTSviLLE, Ala., 
January 4, 1899. 

The Adjutant-General, United States Army, 
Washington, D. C. 

Sir: I have the honor to recommend that a "Congressional 
Medal of Honor" be given to Theodore Roosevelt (late Colonel 
First Volunteer Cavalry), for distinguished conduct and con- 
spicuous bravery in command of his regiment in the charge on 
San Juan Hill, Cuba, July i, 1898. 

In compliance with G. O. 135, A. G. O. 1898, I enclose my 
certificate showing my personal knowledge of Colonel Roosevelt's 
conduct. Very respectfully, 

C. J. Stevens, 
Captain Second Cavalry. 

I hereby certify that on July I, 1898, at the battle of San Juan, 
Cuba, I witnessed Colonel (then Lieutenant-Colonel) Roosevelt, 
First Volunteer Cavalry, United States of America, mounted, 
leading his regiment in the charge on San Juan. By his gallantry 
and strong personality he contributed most materially to the suc- 
cess of the charge of the Cavalry Division up San Juan Hill. 

Colonel Roosevelt was among the first to reach the crest of the 
hill, and his dashing example, his absolute fearlessness and gallant 
leading rendered his conduct conspicuous and clearly distinguished 
above other men. 

C. J. Stevens, 
Captain Second Cavalry. 
{Late First Lieutenant Ninth Cavalry.) 

Young's Island, S. C, 

December 28, 1898. 

To THE Adjutant-General, United States Army. 
Washington, D. C. 

Sir : Believing that information relating to superior conduct 
on the part of any of the higher officers who participated in the 
Spanish-American War (and which information may not have been 
given) would be appreciated by the Department over which you 
preside, I have the honor to call your attention to the part borne 
by Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, of the late First United States 
Volunteer Cavalry, in the battle of July 1st last. I do this not 
only because I think you ought to know, but because his regi- 



APPENDIX 287 

ment as a whole were very proud of his splendid actions that day 
and believe they call for that most coveted distinction of the 
American officer, the Medal of Honor. Held in support, he 
brought his regiment, at exactly the right time, not only up to the 
line of regulars, but went through them and headed, on horseback, 
the charge on Kettle Hill ; this being done on his own initiative, 
the regulars as well as his own men following. He then headed the 
charge on the next hill, both regulars and the First United States 
Volunteer Cavalry following. He was so near the intrenchments 
on the second hill, that he shot and killed with a revolver one of the 
enemy before they broke completely. He then led the cavalry 
on the chain of hills overlooking Santiago, where he remained in 
charge of all the cavalry that was at the extreme front for the rest 
of that day and night. His unhesitating gallantry in taking the 
initiative against intrenchments lined by men armed with rapid 
fire guns certainly won him the highest consideration and admira- 
tion of all who witnessed his conduct throughout that day. 

What I here write I can bear witness to from personally having 
seen. Very respectfully, 

M. J. Jenkins, 
Major Late First United States Cavalry. 



Prescott, a. T., 
December 25, 1898. 

I was Colonel Roosevelt's orderly at the battle of San Juan Hill, 
and from that time on until our return to Montauk Point. I was 
with him all through the fighting, and believe I was the only man 
who was always with him, though during part of the time Lieuten- 
ants Ferguson and Greenwald were also close to him. He led our 
regiment forward on horseback until he came to the men of the 
Ninth Cavalry lying down. He led us through these and they 
got up and joined us. He gave the order to charge on Kettle Hill, 
and led us on horseback up the hill, both Rough Riders and the 
Ninth Cavalry. He was the first on the hill, I being very nearly 
alongside of him. Some Spanish riflemen were coming out of the 
intrenchments and he killed one with his revolver. He took the 
men on to the crest of the hill and bade them begin firing on the 
blockhouse on the hill to our left, the one the infantry were attack- 
ing. When we took it, he gave the order to charge, and led the 
troops on Kettle Hill forward against the blockhouse on our front. 
He then had charge of all the cavalry on the hills overlooking 



288 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

Santiago, where we afterwards dug our trenches. He had com- 
mand that afternoon and night, and for the rest of the time com- 
manded our regiment at this point. 

Yours very truly, 

H. P. Bardshar. 



Cambridge, Md., 
March 27, 1902. 

Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States. 
Washington, D. C. 

Dear Sir: At your request, I send you the following extracts 
from my diary, and from notes taken on the day of the assault on 
San Juan. I kept in my pocket a small pad on which incidents 
were noted daily from the landing until the surrender. On the 
day of the fight notes were taken just before Grimes fired his first 
gun, just after the third reply from the enemy — when we were 
massed in the road about seventy paces from Grimes' guns, and 
when I was beginning to get scared and to think I would be killed 
— at the halt just before you advanced, and under the shelter of 
the hills in the evening. Each time that notes were taken, the 
page was put in an envelope addressed to my wife. At the first 
chance they were mailed to her, and on my arrival in the United 
States the story of the fight, taken from these notes, was entered in 
the diary I keep in a book. I make this lengthy explanation that 
you may see that everything put down was fresh in my memory. 

I quote from my diary: "The tension on the men was great. 
Suddenly a line of men appeared coming from our right. They 
were advancing through the long grass, deployed as skirmishers 
and were under fire. At their head, or rather in front of them and 
leading them, rode Colonel Roosevelt. He was very conspicuous, 
mounted as he was. The men were the 'Rough Riders,' so-called. 
I heard some one calling to them not to fire into us, and seeing 
Colonel Carrol, reported to him, and was told to go out and meet 
them, and caution them as to our position, we being between them 
and the enemy. I did so, speaking to Colonel Roosevelt. I also 
told him we were under orders not to advance, and asked him if he 
had received any orders. He replied that he was going to charge 
the Spanish trenches. I told this to Colonel Carrol, and to 
Captain Dimmick, our squadron commander. A few moments 
after the word passed down that our left (Captain Taylor) was 
about to charge. Captain McBlain called out, 'we must go in 



APPENDIX 289 

with those troops ; we must support Taylor.' I called this to Cap- 
tain Dimmick, and he gave the order to assault." 

"The cheer was taken up and taken up again, on the left, and in 
the distance it rolled on and on. And so we started. Colonel 
Roosevelt, of the Rough Riders, started the whole movement on 
the left, which was the first advance of the assault." 

The following is taken from my notes and was hastily jotted 
doWn on the field: "The Rough Riders came in line — Colonel 
Roosevelt said he would assault — Taylor joined them with his 
troop — McBlain called to Dimmick, 'let us go, we must go to 
support them.' Dimmick said all right — and so, with no orders, 
we went in." 

I find many of my notes are illegible from perspiration. My 
authority for saying Taylor went in with you, "joined with his 
troop" was the word passed to me and repeated to Captain Dim- 
mick that Taylor was about to charge with you. I could not see 
his troop. I have not put it in my diary, but in another place 
I have noted that Colonel Carrol, who was acting as brigade com- 
mander, told me to ask you if you had any orders. 

I have the honor to be, 

Very respectfully. 

Your obedient servant, 
Henry Anson Barber, 
Captain Tzveniy-Eighth Infantry, 

{formerly of Ninth Cavalry). 

Headquarters Pacific Division, 

San Francisco, Cal., 

May II, 1905. 

Dear Mr. President: As some discussion has arisen in the 
public prints regarding the battle of San Juan, Cuba, July i, 1898, 
and your personal movements during that day have been the sub- 
ject of comment, it may not be amiss in me to state some facts 
coming under my personal observation as Commanding General 
of the Cavalry Division, of which your regiment formed a part. 
It will, perhaps, be advisable to show first how I came to be in 
command, in order that my statement may have due weight as an 
authoritative statement of facts : I was placed in command 
of the Cavalry Division on the afternoon of June 30th by General 
Shafter; the assignment was made owing to the severe illness of 
General Wheeler, who was the permanent commander of said 
Division. Brigadier General Young, who commanded the Second 
u 



290 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

Cavalry Brigade, of which your regiment — the First Volunteer 
Cavalry — formed a part, was also very ill, and I found it neces- 
sary to relieve him from command and place Colonel Wood, of the 
Rough Riders, in command of the Brigade; this change placed 
you in command of your regiment. 

The Division moved from its camp on the evening of June 30th, 
and bivouacked at and about El Poso. I saw you personally in 
the vicinity of El Poso, about 8 a.m., July 1st. I saw you again 
on the road leading from El Poso to the San Juan River; you were 
at the head of your regiment, which was leading the Second Bri- 
gade, and immediately behind the rear regiment of the First Bri- 
gade. My orders were to turn to the right at San Juan River and 
take up a line along that stream and try and connect with General 
Lawton, who was to engage the enemy at El Caney. On reaching 
the river we came under the fire ol the Spanish forces posted on 
San Juan Ridge and Kettle Hill. The First Brigade was faced to 
the front in line as soon as it had cleared the road, and the Second 
Brigade was ordered to pass in rear of the first and face to the front 
when clear of the First Brigade. This movement was very diffi- 
cult, owing to the heavy undergrowth, and the regiments became 
more or less tangled up, but eventually the formation was accom- 
plished, and the Division stood in an irregular line along the San 
Juan River, the Second Brigade on the right. We were subjected 
to a heavy fire from the forces on San Juan Ridge and Kettle Hill ; 
our position was untenable, and it became necessary to assault the 
enemy or fall back. Kettle Hill was immediately in front of the 
Cavalry, and it was determined to assault that hill. The First 
Brigade was ordered forward, and the Second Brigade was ordered 
to support the attack ; personally, I accompanied a portion of the 
Tenth Cavalry, Second Brigade, and the Rough Riders were to the 
right. This brought your regiment to the right of the house which 
was at the summit of the hill. Shortly after I reached the crest 
of the hill you came to me, accompanied, I think, by Captain C. J. 
Stevens, of the Ninth Cavalry. We were then in a position to see 
the line of intrenchments along San Juan Ridge, and could see 
Kent's Infantry Division engaged on our left, and Hawkins' as- 
sault against Fort San Juan. You asked me for permission to 
move forward and assault San Juan Ridge. I gave you the order 
in person to move forward, and I saw you move forward and 
assault San Juan Ridge with your regiment and portions of the 
First and Tenth Cavalry belonging to your Brigade. I held a 
portion of the Second Brigade as a reserve on Kettle Hill, not 
knowing what force the enemy might have in reserve behind the 



APPENDIX 291 

ridge. The First Brigade also moved forward and assaulted the 
ridge to the right of Fort San Juan. There was a small lake be- 
tween Kettle Hill and San Juan Ridge, and in moving forward your 
command passed to the right of this lake. This brought you oppo- 
site a house on San Juan Ridge — not Fort San Juan proper, but 
a frame house Surrounded by an earthwork. The enemy lost a 
number of men at this point, whose bodies lay in the trenches. 
Later in the day I rode along the line, and, as I recall it, a portion 
of the Tenth Cavalry was immediately about this house, and your 
regiment occupied an irregular semi-circular position along the 
ridge and immediately to the right of the house. You had pickets 
out to your front; and several hundred yards to your front the 
Spaniards had a heavy outpost occupying a house, with rifle pits 
surrounding it. Later in the day, and during the following day, 
the various regiments forming the Division were rearranged and 
brought into tactical formation, the First Brigade on the left and 
immediately to the right of Fort San Juan, and the Second Brigade 
on the right of the First. 

This was the position occupied by the Cavalry Division until the 
final surrender of the Spanish forces, on July 17, 1898. 

In conclusion allow me to say, that I saw you, personally, at 
about 8 A.M., at El Poso ; later, on the road to San Juan River; 
later, on the summit of Kettle Hill, immediately after its capture 
by the Cavalry Division. I saw you move forward with your 
command to assault San Juan Ridge, and I saw you on San Juan 
Ridge, where we visited your line together, and you explained to 
me the disposition of your command. 

I am, sir, with much respect. 

Your obedient servant, 

Samuel S. Sumner, 
Major-General United States Army. 




Copyright by Arthur Hewitt. 

Theodore Roosevelt, Governor of New York State. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE NEW YORK GOVERNORSHIP 

IN September, 1898, the First Volunteer Cavalry, in 
company with most of the rest of the Fifth Army 
Corps, was disembarked at Montauk Point. Shortly 
after it was disbanded, and a few days later, I was 
nominated for Governor of New York by the Republican 
party. Timothy L. Woodruff was nominated for Lieutenant- 
Governor. He was my stanch friend throughout the term 
of our joint service. 

The previous year, the machine or standpat Republicans, 
who were under the domination of Senator Piatt, had come 
to a complete break with the anti-machine element over the 
New York mayoralty. This had brought the Republican 
party to a smash, not only in New York City, but in the 
State, where the Democratic candidate for Chief Judge 
of the Court of Appeals, Alton B. Parker, was elected by 
sixty or eighty thousand majority. Mr. Parker was an 
able man, a lieutenant of Mr. Hill's, standing close to the 
conservative Democrats of the Wall Street type. These 
conservative Democrats were planning how to wrest the 
Democratic party from the control of Mr. Bryan. They 
hailed Judge Parker's victory as a godsend. The Judge at 
once loomed up as a Presidential possibility, and was care- 
fully groomed for the position by the New York Democratic 
machine, and its financial allies in the New York business 
world. 

The Republicans realized that the chances were very much 
against them. Accordingly the leaders were in a chastened 
mood and ready to nominate any candidate with whom 
they thought there was a chance of winning. I was the 
only possibility, and, accordingly, under pressure from 

293 



294 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

certain of the leaders who recognized this fact, and who 
responded to popular pressure, Senator Piatt picked me 
for the nomination. He was entirely frank in the matter. 
He made no pretense that he liked me personally; but he 
deferred to the judgment of those who insisted that I was 
the only man who could be elected, and that therefore I had 
to be nominated. 

Foremost among the leaders who pressed me on Mr. 
Piatt (who "pestered" him about me, to use his own words) 
were Mr. Quigg, Mr. Odell — then State Chairman of the 
Republican organization, and afterwards Governor — and 
Mr. Hazel, now United States Judge. Judge Hazel did not 
know me personally, but felt that the sentiment in his city, 
Buffalo, demanded my nomination, and that the then 
Republican Governor, Mr. Black, could not be reelected. 
Mr. Odell, who hardly knew me personally, felt the same 
way about Mr. Black's chances, and, as he had just taken 
the State Chairmanship, he was very anxious to win a 
victory. Mr. Quigg knew me quite well personally; he 
had been in touch with me for years, while he was a reporter 
on the Tribune, and also when he edited a paper in 
Montana ; he had been on good terms with me while he was 
in Congress and I was Civil Service Commissioner, meeting 
me often in company with my especial cronies in Congress 
— men like Lodge, Speaker Tom Reed, Greenhalge, Butter- 
worth, and Dolliver — and he had urged my appointment as 
Police Commissioner on Mayor Strong. 

It was Mr. Quigg who called on me at Montauk Point to 
sound me about the Governorship ; Mr. Piatt being by no 
means enthusiastic over Mr. Quigg's mission, largely be- 
cause he disapproved of the Spanish War and of my part 
in bringing it about. Mr. Quigg saw me in my tent, in 
which he spent a couple of hours with me, my brother-in-law, 
Douglas Robinson, being also present. Quigg spoke very 
frankly to me, stating that he earnestly desired to see me 
nominated and believed that the great body of Republican 
voters in the State so desired, but that the organization and 
the State Convention would finally do what Senator Piatt 
desired. He said that county leaders were already coming to 



THE NEW YORK GOVERNORSHIP 295 

Senator Piatt, hinting at a close election, expressing doubt 
of Governor Black's availability for reelection, and asking 
why it would not be a good thing to nominate me ; that now 
that I had returned to the United States this would go on 
more and more all the time, and that he (Quigg) did not wish 
that these men should be discouraged and be sent back to 
their localities to suppress a rising sentiment in my favor. 
For this reason he said that he wanted from me a plain 
statement as to whether or not I wanted the nomination, 
and as to what would be my attitude toward the organiza- 
tion in the event of my nomination and election, whether 
or not I would "make war" on Mr. Piatt and his friends, or 
whether I would confer with them and with the organiza- 
tion leaders generally, and give fair consideration to their 
point of view as to party policy and public interest. He said 
he had not come to make me any offer of the nomination, 
and had no authority to do so, nor to get any pledges or 
promises. He simply wanted a frank definition of my atti- 
tude towards existing party conditions. 

To this I replied that I should like to be nominated, and 
if nominated would promise to throw myself into the cam- 
paign with all possible energy. I said that I should not 
make war on Mr. Piatt or anybody else if war could be 
avoided ; that what I wanted was to be Governor and not a 
faction leader ; that I certainly would confer with the organi- 
zation men, as with everybody else who seemed to me to have 
knowledge of and interest in public affairs, and that as to Mr. 
Piatt and the organization leaders, I would do so in the sin- 
cere hope that there might always result harmony of opinion 
and purpose ; but that while I would try to get on well with 
the organization, the organization must with equal sincerity 
strive to do what I regarded as essential for the public good ; 
and that in every case, after full consideration of what 
everybody had to say who might possess real knowledge of 
the matter, I should have to act finally as my own judg- 
ment and conscience dictated and administer the State 
government as I thought it ought to be administered. 
Quigg said that this was precisely what he supposed I would 
say, that it was all anybody could expect, and that he would 



296 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

state it to Senator Piatt precisely as I had put it to him, 
which he accordingly did ; and, throughout my term as 
Governor, Quigg lived loyally up to our understanding.^ 

After being nominated, I made a hard and aggressive 
campaign through the State. My opponent was a respect- 
able man, a judge, behind whom stood Mr. Croker, the boss 
of Tammany Hall. My object was to make the people 
understand that it was Croker, and not the nominal candidate, 
who was my real opponent ; that the choice lay between Cro- 
kerism and myself. Croker was a powerful and truculent 
man, the autocrat of his organization, and of a domineering 
nature. For his own reasons he insisted upon Tammany's 
turning down an excellent Democratic judge who was a 
candidate for reelection. This gave me my chance. Under 
my attack, Croker, who was a stalwart fighting man and 
who would not take an attack tamely, himself came to the 
front. I was able to fix the contest in the public mind as 
one between himself and myself; and, against all proba- 
bilities, I won by the rather narrow margin of eighteen thou- 
sand plurality. 

As I have already said, there is a lunatic fringe to every 
reform movement. At least nine-tenths of all the sincere 
reformers supported me ; but the ultra-pacificists, the so- 
called anti-imperialists, or anti-militarists, or peace-at-any- 
price men, preferred Croker to me ; and another knot of 
extremists who had at first ardently insisted that I must be 
"forced" on Piatt, as soon as Piatt supported me themselves 
opposed me because he supported me. After election John 
Hay wrote me as follows: "While you are Governor, I 
believe the party can be made solid as never before. You 
have already shown that a man may be absolutely honest 
and yet practical ; a reformer by instinct and a wise politi- 
cian ; brave, bold, and uncompromising, and yet not a wild 
ass of the desert. The exhibition made by the professional 

1 In a letter to me Mr. Quigg states, what I had forgotten, that I told him to tell 
the Senator that while I would talk freely with him, and had no intention of be- 
coming a factional leader with a personal organization, yet that I must have direct 
personal relations with everybody, and get their views at first hand whenever I so 
desired, because I could not have one man speaking for all. 



THE NEW YORK GOVERNORSHIP 297 

Independents in voting against you for no reason on earth 
except that somebody else was voting for you, is a lesson 
that is worth its cost." 

At that time boss rule was at its very zenith. Mr. Bryan's 
candidacy in 1896 on a free silver platform had threatened 
such frightful business disaster as to make the business men, 
the wage-workers, and the professional classes generally, 
turn eagerly to the Republican party. East of the Missis- 
sippi the Republican vote for Mr. McKinley was larger by 
far than it had been for Abraham Lincoln in the days when 
the life of the Nation was at stake. Mr. Bryan championed 
many sorely needed reforms in the interest of the plain 
people ; but many of his platform proposals, economic and 
otherwise, were of such a character that to have put them 
into practice would have meant to plunge all our people 
into conditions far worse than any of those for which he 
sought a remedy. The free silver advocates included sincere 
and upright men who were able to make a strong case for 
their position ; but with them and dominating them were 
all the believers in the complete or partial repudiation of 
National, State, and private debts ; and not only the busi- 
ness men but the workingmen grew to feel that under these 
circumstances too heavy a price could not be paid to avert 
the Democratic triumph. The fear of Mr. Bryan threw 
almost all the leading men of all classes into the arms of 
whoever opposed him. 

The Republican bosses, who were already very powerful, 
and who were already in fairly close alliance with the privi- 
leged interests, now found everything working to their 
advantage. Good and high-minded men of conservative 
temperament in their panic played into the hands of the 
ultra-reactionaries of business and politics. The alliance 
between the two kinds of privilege, political and financial, 
was closely cemented ; and wherever there was any attempt 
to break it up, the cry was at once raised that this merely 
represented another phase of the assault on National honesty 
and individual and mercantile integrity. As so often hap- 
pens, the excesses and threats of an unwise and extreme 
radicalism had resulted in immensely strengthening the 



298 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

position of the beneficiaries of reaction. This was the era 
when the Standard Oil Company achieved a mastery of 
Pennsylvania politics so far-reaching and so corrupt that it 
is difficult to describe it without seeming to exaggerate. 

In New York State, United States Senator Piatt was the 
absolute boss of the Republican party. "Big business" was 
back of him ; yet at the time this, the most important ele- 
ment in his strength, was only imperfectly understood. 
It was not until I was elected Governor that I myself came 
to understand it. We were still accustomed to talking of 
the "machine" as if it were something merely political, 
with which business had nothing to do. Senator Piatt did 
not use his political position to advance his private fortunes 
— therein differing absolutely from many other political 
bosses. He lived in hotels and had few extravagant tastes. 
Indeed, I could not find that he had any tastes at all except 
for politics, and on rare occasions for a very dry theology 
wholly divorced from moral implications. But big business 
men contributed to him large sums of money, which enabled 
him to keep his grip on the machine and secured for them the 
help of the machine if they were threatened with adverse 
legislation. The contributions were given in the guise of 
contributions for campaign purposes, of money for the good 
of the party ; when the money was contributed there was 
rarely talk of specific favors in return.^ It was simply put 
into Mr. Piatt's hands and treated by him as in the cam- 
paign chest. Then he distributed it in the districts where it 
was most needed by the candidates and organization leaders. 
Ordinarily no pledge was required from the latter to the 
bosses, any more than it was required by the business men 
from Mr. Piatt or his lieutenants. No pledge was needed. 
It was all a "gentlemen's understanding." As the Senator 

^ Each nation has its own pet sins to which it is merciful and also sins which it 
treats as most abhorrent. In America we are peculiarly sensitive about big money 
contributions for which the donors expect any reward. In England, where in some 
ways the standard is higher than here, such contributions are accepted as a matter 
of course, nay, as one of the methods by which wealthy men obtain peerages. It 
would be well-nigh an impossibility for a man to secure a seat in the United States 
Senate by mere campaign contributions, in the way that seats in the British House 
of Lords have often been secured without any scandal being caused thereby. 



THE NEW YORK GOVERNORSHIP 299 

once said to me, if a man's character was such that it was 
necessary to get a promise from him, it was clear proof that 
his character was such that the promise would not be worth 
anything after it was made. 

It must not be forgotten that some of the worst practices of 
the machine in dealings of this kind represented merely 
virtues in the wrong place, virtues wrenched out of proper 
relation to their surroundings. A man in a doubtful district 
might win only because of the help Mr. Piatt gave him ; 
he might be a decent young fellow without money enough 
to finance his own campaign, who was able to finance it only 
because Piatt of his own accord found out or was apprised 
of his need and advanced the money. Such a man felt 
grateful, and, because of his good qualities, joined with the 
purely sordid and corrupt heelers and crooked politicians to 
become part of the Piatt machine. In his turn Mr. Piatt was 
recognized by the business men, the big contributors, as an 
honorable man ; not only a man of his word, but a man who, 
whenever he received a favor, could be trusted to do his best 
to repay it on any occasion that arose. I believe that 
Usually the contributors, and the recipient, sincerely felt 
that the transaction was proper and subserved the cause of 
good politics and good business ; and, indeed, as regards 
the major part of the contributions, it is probable that this 
was the fact, and that the only criticism that could properly 
be made about the contributions was that they were not 
made with publicity — and at that time neither the parties 
nor the public had any realization that publicity was neces- 
sary, or any adequate understanding of the dangers of the 
"invisible empire" which throve by what was done in 
secrecy. Many, probably most, of, the contributors of this 
type never wished anything personal in exchange for their 
contributions, and made them with sincere patriotism, de- 
siring in return only that the Government should be con- 
ducted on a proper basis. Unfortunately, it was, in prac- 
tice, exceedingly difficult to distinguish these men from the 
others who contributed big sums to the various party 
bosses with the expectation of gaining concrete and personal 
advantages (in which the bosses shared) at the expense of the 



300 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

general public. It was very hard to draw the line between 
these two types of contributions. 

There was but one kind of money contribution as to which 
it seemed to me absolutely impossible for either the con- 
tributor or the recipient to disguise to themselves the evil 
meaning of the contribution. This was where a big corpora- 
tion contributed to both political parties. I knew of one 
such case where in a State campaign a big corporation 
which had many dealings with public officials frankly con- 
tributed in the neighborhood of a hundred thousand dollars 
to one campaign fund and fifty thousand dollars to the cam- 
paign fund of the other side — and, I believe, made some 
further substantial contributions in the same ratio of two 
dollars to one side for every one dollar given to the other. 
The contributors were Democrats, and the big contributions 
went to the Democratic managers. The Republican was 
elected, and after his election, when a matter came up 
affecting the company, in which its interests were hostile 
to those of the general public, the successful candidate, then 
holding a high State office, was approached by his cam- 
paign managers and the situation put frankly before him. 
He was less disturbed than astonished, and remarked, 
"Why, I thought So-and-so and his associates were Demo- 
crats and subscribed to the Democratic campaign fund." 
"So they did," was the answer; "they subscribed to them 
twice as much as they subscribed to us, but if they had had 
any idea that you intended doing what you now say you will 
do, they would have subscribed it all to the other side, and 
more too." The State official in his turn answered that he 
was very sorry if any one had subscribed under a misappre- 
hension, that it was no fault of his, for he had stated definitely 
and clearly his position, that he of course had no money 
wherewith himself to return what without his knowledge had 
been contributed, and that all he could say was that any 
man who had subscribed to his campaign fund under the 
impression that the receipt of the subscription would be a 
bar to the performance of public duty was sadly mistaken. 
The control by Mr. Piatt and his lieutenants over the 
organization was well-nigh complete. There were splits 



THE NEW YORK GOVERNORSHIP 301 

among the bosses, and Insurgent movements now and then, 
but the ordinary citizens had no control over the political 
machinery except in a very few districts. There were, how- 
ever, plenty of good men in politics, men who either came 
from districts where there was popular control, or who rep- 
resented a genuine aspiration towards good citizenship on 
the part of some boss or group of bosses, or else who had been 
nominated frankly for reasons of expediency by bosses 
whose attitude towards good citizenship was at best one of 
Gallio-like indifference. At the time when I was nominated 
for Governor, as later when Mr. Hughes was nominated and 
renominated for Governor, there was no possibility of secur- 
ing the nomination unless the bosses permitted it. In each 
case the bosses, the machine leaders, took a man for whom 
they did not care, because he was the only man with whom 
they could win. In the case of Mr. Hughes there was of 
course also the fact of pressure from the National Adminis- 
tration. But. the bosses were never overcome in a fair fight, 
when they had made up their minds to fight, until the 
Saratoga Convention in 1910, when Mr. Stimson was 
nominated for Governor. 

Senator Piatt had the same inborn capacity for the kind of 
politics which he liked that many big Wall Street men have 
shown for not wholly dissimilar types of finance. It was 
his chief interest, and he applied himself to it unremittingly. 
He handled his private business successfully ; but it was 
politics in which he was absorbed, and he concerned himself 
therewith every day in the year. He had built up an excel- 
lent system of organization, and the necessary funds came 
from corporations and men of wealth who contributed as 
I have described above. The majority of the men with a 
natural capacity for organization leadership of the type 
which has generally been prevalent in New York politics 
turned to Senator Piatt as their natural chief and helped 
build up the organization, until under his leadership it 
became more powerful and in a position of greater control 
than any other Republican machine in the country, except- 
ing in Pennsylvania. The Democratic machines in some of 
the big cities, as in New York and Boston, and the country 



302 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

Democratic machine of New York under David B. Hill, were 
probably even more efficient, representing an even more com- 
plete mastery by the bosses, and an even greater degree of 
drilled obedience among the henchmen. It would be an 
entire mistake to suppose that Mr. Piatt's lieutenants were 
either all bad men or all influenced by unworthy motives. 
He was constantly doing favors for men. He had won the 
gratitude of many good men. In the country districts 
especially, there were many places where his machine In- 
cluded the majority of the best citizens, the leading and 
substantial citizens, among the inhabitants. Some of his 
strongest and most efficient lieutenants were disinterested 
men of high character. 

There had always been a good deal of opposition to Mr. 
Piatt and the machine, but the leadership of this opposition 
was apt to be found only among those whom Abraham 
Lincoln called the "silk stockings," and much of it excited 
almost as much derision among the plain people as the ma- 
chine itself excited anger or dislike. Very many of Mr. 
Piatt's opponents really disliked him and his methods, for 
aesthetic rather than for moral reasons, and the bulk of the 
people half-consciously felt this and refused to submit to 
their leadership. The men who opposed him in this manner 
were good citizens according to their lights, prominent in the 
social clubs and in philanthropic circles, men of means and 
often men of business standing. They disliked coarse and 
vulgar politicians, and they sincerely reprobated all the short- 
comings that were recognized by, and were offensive to, 
people of their own caste. They had not the slightest under- 
standing of the needs, interests, ways of thought, and con- 
victions of the average small man ; and the small man felt 
this, although he could not express it, and sensed that they 
were really not concerned with his welfare, and that they 
did not offer him anything materially better from his point 
of view than the machine. 

When reformers of this type attempted to oppose Mr. 
Piatt, they usually put up either some rather inefficient, 
well-meaning person, who bathed every day, and didn't 
steal, but whose only good point was "respectability," 



THE NEW YORK GOVERNORSHIP 303 

and who knew nothing of the great fundamental questions 
looming before us ; or else they put up some big business 
man or corporation lawyer who was wedded to the gross 
wrong and injustice of our economic system, and who neither 
by personality nor by programme gave the ordinary plain 
people any belief that there was promise of vital good to 
them in the change. The correctness of their view was 
proved by the fact that as soon as fundamental economic 
and social reforms were at stake the aesthetic, as distinguished 
from the genuinely moral, reformers, for the most part 
sided with the bosses against the people. 

When I became Governor, the conscience of the people 
was in no way or shape aroused, as it has since become 
roused. The people accepted and practiced in a matter-of- 
course way as quite proper things which they would not now 
tolerate. They had no definite and clearly outlined con- 
ception of what they wished in the way of reform. They 
on the whole tolerated, and indeed approved of, the machine ; 
and there had been no development on any considerable 
scale of reformers with the vision to see what the needs of 
the people were, and the high purpose sanely to achieve 
what was necessary in order to meet these needs. I knew 
both the machine and the silk-stocking reformers fairly well, 
from many years' close association with them. The machine 
as such had no ideals at all, although many of the men com- 
posing it did have. On the other hand, the ideals of very 
many of the silk-stocking reformers did not relate to the 
questions of real and vital interest to our people ; and, 
singularly enough, in international matters, these same silk- 
stockings were no more to be trusted than the average igno- 
rant demagogue or shortsighted spoils politicians. I felt 
that these men would be broken reeds to which to trust in 
any vital contest for betterment of social and industrial 
conditions. 

I had neither the training nor the capacity that would have 
enabled me to match Mr. Piatt and his machine people on 
their own ground. Nor did I believe that the effort to 
build up a machine of my own under the then existing condi- 
tions would meet the needs of the situation so far as the peo- 



304 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

pie were concerned. I therefore made no effort to create 
a machine of my own, and consistently adopted the plan of 
going over the heads of the men holding public office and of 
the men in control of the organization, and appealing directly 
to the people behind them. The machine, for instance, had 
a more or less strong control over the great bulk of the 
members of the State Legislature ; but in the last resort the 
people behind these legislators had a still greater control 
over them. I made up my mind that the only way I could 
beat the bosses whenever the need to do so arose (and unless 
there was such need I did not wish to try) was, not by at- 
tempting to manipulate the machinery, and not by trusting 
merely to the professional reformers, but by making my ap- 
peal as directly and as emphatically as I knew how to the 
mass of voters themselves, to the people, to the men who if 
waked up would be able to impose their will on their repre- 
sentatives. My success depended upon getting the people 
in the different districts to look at matters in my way, and 
getting them to take such an active interest in affairs as to 
enable them to exercise control over their representatives. 
There were a few of the Senators and Assemblymen whom 
I could reach by seeing them personally and putting before 
them my arguments ; but most of them were too much 
under the control of the machine for me to shake them loose 
unless they knew that the people were actively behind 
me. In making my appeal to the people as a whole I was 
dealing with an entirely different constituency from that 
which, especially in the big cities, liked to think of itself as 
the "better element," the particular exponent of reform and 
good citizenship. I was dealing with shrewd, hard-headed, 
kindly men and women, chiefly concerned with the absorbing 
work of earning their own living, and impatient of fads, who 
had grown to feel that the associations with the word "re- 
former" were not much better than the associations with the 
word "politician." I had to convince these men and women 
of my good faith, and, moreover, of my common sense and 
efficiency. They were most of them strong partisans, and an 
outrage had to be very real and very great to shake them 
even partially loose from their party affiliations. Moreover, 



THE NEW YORK GOVERNORSHIP 305 

they took little interest in any fight of mere personalities. 
They were not influenced in the least by the silk-stocking 
reform view of Mr. Piatt. I knew that if they were per- 
suaded that I was engaged in a mere faction fight against 
him, that it was a mere issue between his ambition and mine, 
they would at once become indifferent, and my fight would 
be lost. 

But I felt that I could count on their support wherever 
I could show them that the fight was not made just for the 
sake of the row, that it was not made merely as a factional 
contest against Senator Piatt and the organization, but was 
waged from a sense of duty for real and tangible causes such 
as the promotion of governmental efficiency and honesty, 
and forcing powerful moneyed men to take the proper atti- 
tude toward the community at large. They stood by me 
when I insisted upon having the canal department, the in- 
surance department, and the various departments of the 
State Government run with efficiency and honesty ; they 
stood by me when I insisted upon making wealthy men who 
owned franchises pay the State what they properly ought 
to pay ; they stood by me when, in connection with the 
strikes on the Croton Aqueduct and in Bufl^alo, I promptly 
used the military power of the State to put a stop to rioting 
and violence. 

In the latter case my chief opponents and critics were 
local politicians who were truckling to the labor vote ; but 
In all cases coming under the first two categories I had serious 
trouble with the State leaders of the machine. I always did 
my best. In good faith, to get Mr. Piatt and the other heads 
of the machine to accept my views, and to convince them, by 
repeated private conversations, that I was right. I never 
wantonly antagonized or humiliated them. I did not wish 
to humiliate them or to seem victorious over them ; what I 
wished was to secure the things that I thought It essential 
to the men and women of the State to secure. If I could 
finally persuade them to support me, well and good ; In 
such case I continued to work with them In the friendliest 
manner. 

If after repeated and persistent effort I failed to get them 



3o6 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

to support me, then I made a fair fight in the open, and in a 
majority of cases I carried my point and succeeded in getting 
through the legislation which I wished. In theory the Execu- 
tive has nothing to do with legislation. In practice, as 
things now are, the Executive is or ought to be peculiarly 
representative of the people as a whole. As often as not the 
action of the Executive offers the only means by which the 
people can get the legislation they demand and ought to 
have. Therefore a good executive under the present con- 
ditions of American political life must take a very active 
interest in getting the right kind of legislation, in addition 
to performing his executive duties with an eye single to the 
public welfare. More than half of my work as Governor 
was in the direction of getting needed and important legisla- 
tion. I accomplished this only by arousing the people, and 
riveting their attention on what was done. 

Gradually the people began to wake up more and more 
to the fact that the machine politicians were not giving them 
the kind of government which they wished. As this waking 
up grew more general, not merely in New York or any other 
one State, but throughout most of the Nation, the power of 
the bosses waned. Then a curious thing happened. The 
professional reformers who had most loudly criticized these 
bosses began to change toward them. Newspaper editors, 
college presidents, corporation lawyers, and big business 
men, all alike, had denounced the bosses and had taken part 
in reform movements against them so long as these reforms 
dealt only with things that were superficial, or with funda- 
mental things that did not affect themselves and their as- 
sociates. But the majority of these men turned to the sup- 
port of the bosses when the great new movement began 
clearly to make itself evident as one against privilege in 
business no less than against privilege in politics, as one for 
social and industrial no less than for political righteousness 
and fair dealing. The big corporation lawyer who had 
antagonized the boss in matters which he regarded as purely 
political stood shoulder to shoulder with the boss when the 
movement for betterment took shape in direct attack on the 
combination of business with politics and with the judiciary 



THE NEW YORK GOVERNORSHIP 307 

which has done so much to enthrone privilege in the economic 
world. 

The reformers who denounced political corruption and 
fraud when shown at the expense of their own candidates by 
machine ward heelers of a low type hysterically applauded 
similar corrupt trickery when practiced by these same 
politicians against men with whose political and industrial 
programme the reformers were not in sympathy. I had 
always been instinctively and by nature a democrat, 
but if I had needed conversion to the democratic ideal here in 
America the stimulus would have been supplied by what I 
saw of the attitude, not merely of the bulk of the men of 
greatest wealth, but of the bulk of the men who most 
prided themselves upon their education and culture, when 
we began in good faith to grapple with the wrong and injus- 
tice of our social and industrial system, and to hit at the 
men responsible for the wrong, no matter how high they 
stood in business or in politics, at the bar or on the bench. 
It was while I was Governor, and especially in connection 
with the franchise tax legislation, that I first became thor- 
oughly aware of the real causes of this attitude among the 
men of great wealth and among the men who took their 
tone from the men of great wealth. 

Very soon after my victory in the race for Governor I had 
one or two experiences with Senator Piatt which showed in 
amusing fashion how absolute the rule of the boss was in the 
politics of that day. Senator Piatt, who was always most 
kind and friendly in his personal relations with me, asked 
me in one day to talk over what was to be done at Albany. 
He had the two or three nominal heads of the organization 
with him. They were his lieutenants, who counseled and 
influenced him, whose advice he often followed, but who, 
when he had finally made up his mind, merely registered and 
carried out his decrees. After a little conversation the 
Senator asked if I had any member of the Assembly whom I 
wished to have put on any committee, explaining that the 
committees were being arranged. I answered no, and 
expressed my surprise at what he had said, because I had not 
understood the Speaker who appointed the committees 



3o8 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

had himself been agreed upon by the members-elect. " Oh ! " 
responded the Senator, with a tolerant smile, "He has not 
been chosen yet, but of course whoever we choose as Speaker 
will agree beforehand to make the appointments we wish." 
I made a mental note to the effect that if they attempted 
the same process with the Governor-elect they would find 
themselves mistaken. 

In a few days the opportunity to prove this arrived. 
Under the preceding Administration there had been grave 
scandals about the Erie Canal, the trans-State Canal, and 
these scandals had been one of the chief issues in the cam- 
paign for the Governorship. The construction of this work 
was under the control of the Superintendent of Public Works. 
In the actual state of affairs his office was by far the most 
important office under me, and I intended to appoint to it 
some man of high character and capacity who could be 
trusted to do the work not merely honestly and efficiently, 
but without regard to politics. A week or so after the 
Speakership incident Senator Piatt asked me to come and 
see him (he was an old and physically feeble man, able to 
move about only with extreme difficulty). 

On arrival I found the Lieutenant-Governor elect, Mr. 
Woodruff, who had also been asked to come. The Senator 
informed me that he was glad to say that I would have a 
most admirable man as Superintendent of Public Works, 
as he had just received a telegram from a certain gentleman, 
whom he named, saying that he would accept the position ! 
He handed me the telegram. The man in question was a 
man I liked ; later I appointed him to an important office in 
which he did well. But he came from a city along the line 
of the canal, so that I did not think it best that he should be 
appointed anyhow; and, moreover, what was far more im- 
portant, it was necessary to have it understood at the very 
outset that the Administration was my Administration and 
was no one else's but mine. So I told the Senator very 
politely that I was sorry, but that I could not appoint his 
man. This produced an explosion, but I declined to lose my 
temper, merely repeating that I must decline to accept any 
man chosen for me, and that I must choose the man myself. 



THE NEW YORK GOVERNORSHIP 309 

Although I was very poUte, I was also very firm, and Mr. 
Piatt and his friends finally abandoned their position. 

I appointed an engineer from Brooklyn, a veteran of the ^ 
Civil War, Colonel Partridge, who had served in Mayor 
Low's administration. He was an excellent man in every 
way. He chose as his assistant, actively to superintend the 
work, a Cornell graduate named Elon Hooker, a man with 
no political backing at all, picked simply because he was the 
best equipped man for the place. The office, the most 
important office under me, was run in admirable fashion 
throughout my Administration ; I doubt if there ever was 
an important department of the New York State Govern- 
ment run with a higher standard of efficiency and integrity. 

But this was not all that had to be done about the canals. 
Evidently the whole policy hitherto pursued had been foolish 
and inadequate. I appointed a first-class non-partisan 
commission of business men and expert engineers who went 
into the matter exhaustively, and their report served as the 
basis upon which our entire present canal system is based. 
There remained the question of determining whether the 
canal officials who were in office before I became Governor, 
and whom I had declined to reappoint, had been guilty of 
any action because of which it would be possible to proceed 
against them criminally or otherwise under the law. Such 
criminal action had been freely charged against them during 
the campaign by the Democratic (including the so-called 
mugwump) press. To determine this matter I appointed 
two Democratic lawyers, Messrs. Fox and MacFarlane 
(the latter Federal District Attorney for New York under 
President Cleveland), and put the whole Investigation in 
their hands. These gentlemen made an exhaustive Investi- 
gation lasting several months. They reported that there 
had been grave delinquency in the prosecution of the work, 
delinquency which justified public condemnation of those re- 
sponsible for it (who were out of office), but that there was 
no ground for criminal prosecution. I laid their report 
before the Legislature with a message in which I said : 
" There is probably no lawyer of high standing in the State 
who, after studying the report of counsel in this case and 



3IO THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

the testimony taken by the investigating commission, would 
disagree with them as to the impracticabihty of a successful 
prosecution. Under such circumstances the one remedy 
was a thorough change in the methods and management. 
This change has been made." 

When my successor in the Governorship took office, 
Colonel Partridge retired, and Elon Hooker, finding that he 
could no longer act with entire disregard of politics and with 
an eye single to the efficiency of the work, also left. A dozen 
years later — having in the meantime made a marked suc- 
cess in a business career — he became the Treasurer of the 
National Progressive party. 

My action in regard to the canals, and the management of 
his office, the most important office under me, by Colonel 
Partridge, established my relations with Mr. Piatt from the 
outset on pretty nearly the right basis. But, besides various 
small difficulties, we had one or two serious bits of trouble 
before my duties as Governor ceased. It must be remem- 
bered that Mr. Piatt was to all intents and purposes a large 
part of, and sometimes a majority of, the Legislature. There 
were a few entirely independent men such as Nathaniel 
Elsberg, Regis Post, and Alford Cooley, in each of the 
two houses ; the remainder were under the control of the 
Republican and Democratic bosses, but could also be more or 
less influenced by an aroused public opinion. The two ma- 
chines were apt to make common cause if their vital interests 
were touched. It was my business to devise methods by 
which either the two machines could be kept apart or else 
overthrown if they came together. 

My desire was to achieve results, and not merely to issue 
manifestoes of virtue. It is very easy to be efficient if the 
efficiency is based on unscrupulousness, and it is still easier 
to be virtuous if one is content with the purely negative 
virtue which consists in not doing anything wrong, but being 
wholly unable to accomplish anything positive for good. 
My favorite quotation from Josh Billings again applies : 
It is so much easier to be a harmless dove than a wise serpent. 
My duty was to combine both idealism and efficiency. At 
that time the public conscience was still dormant as regards 



THE NEW YORK GOVERNORSHIP 311 

many species of political and business misconduct, as to 
which during the next decade it became sensitive. I had to 
work with the tools at hand and to take into account the 
feeling of the people, which I have already described. My 
aim was persistently to refuse to be put in a position where 
what I did would seem to be a mere faction struggle against 
Senator Piatt. My aim was to make a fight only when I 
could so manage it that there could be no question in the 
minds of honest men that my prime purpose was not to 
attack Mr. Piatt or any one else except as a necessary in- 
cident to securing clean and efficient government. 

In each case I did my best to persuade Mr. Piatt not to 
oppose me. I endeavored to make it clear to him that I was 
not trying to wrest the organization from him ; and I al- 
ways gave him in detail the reasons why I felt I had to take 
the position I intended to adopt. It was only after I had 
exhausted all the resources of my patience that I would 
finally, if he still proved obstinate, tell him that I intended to 
make the fight anyhow. As I have said, the Senator was an 
old and feeble man in physique, and it was possible for him 
to go about very little. Until Friday evening he would be 
kept at his duties at Washington, while I was in Albany. 
If I wished to see him it generally had to be at his hotel in 
New York on Saturday, and usually I would go there to 
breakfast with him. The one thing I would not permit was 
anything in the nature of a secret or clandestine meeting. I 
always insisted on going openly. Solemn reformers of the 
tom-fool variety, who, according to their custom, paid atten- 
tion to the name and not the thing, were much exercised over 
my "breakfasting with Piatt." Whenever I breakfasted 
with him they became sure that the fact carried with it some 
sinister significance. The worthy creatures never took the 
trouble to follow the sequence of facts and events for them- 
selves. If they had done so they would have seen that any 
series of breakfasts with Piatt always meant that I was 
going to do something he did not like, and that I was trying, 
courteously and frankly, to reconcile him to it. My object 
was to make it as easy as possible for him to come with me. 
As long as there was no clash between us there was no object 



312 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



in my seeing him ; it was only when the clash came or was 
imminent that I had to see him. A series of breakfasts was 
always the prelude to some active warfare.^ In every 

instance I substantially car- 
ried my point, although in 
some cases not in exactly 
the way in which I had 
originally hoped. 

There were various meas- 
ures to which he gave a 
grudging and querulous as- 
sentwithout any break being 
threatened. I secured the 
reenactment of the Civil 
Service Law, which under 
my predecessor had very 
foolishly been repealed. I 
secured a mass of labor legis- 
lation, including the enact- 
ment of laws to increase the 
number of factory inspectors, 
to create a Tenement-House 
Commission (whose findings 
resulted in further and excel- 
lent legislation to improve 
housing conditions), to regu- 
late and improve sweatshop 
labor, to make the eight- 
hour and prevailing rate of 
wages laweflFective, tosecurethegenuineenforcementof theact 
relating to the hours of railway workers, to compel railways to 
equip freight trains with air-brakes, to regulate the working 
hours of women and protect both women and children from 

1 To illustrate my meaning I quote from a letter of mine to Senator Piatt of 
December 13, 1899. He had been trying to get me to promote a certain Judge X 
over the head of another Judge Y. I wrote : "There is a strong feeling among the 
judges and the leading members of the bar that Judge Y ought not to have Judge X 
jumped over his head, and I do not see my way clear to doing it. I am inclined to 
think that the solution I mentioned to you is the solution I shall have to adopt. 
Remember the breakfast at Douglas Robinson's at 8 :30." 




Copyright by Pach Brothers. 

William Loeb, Jr. 

■ Mr. Loeb gave me much information about 
various improper practices in the insur- 
ance business." 



THE NEW YORK GOVERNORSHIP 313 

dangerous machinery, to enforce good scaffolding provisions 
for workmen on buildings, to provide seats for the use of 
waitresses in hotels and restaurants, to reduce the hours of 
labor for drug-store clerks, to provide for the registration of 
laborers for municipal employment. I tried hard but failed 
to secure an employers' liability law and the state control 
of employment offices. There was hard fighting over some 
of these bills, and, what was much more serious, there was 
effort to get round the law by trickery and by securing its 
inefficient enforcement. I was continually helped by men 
with whom I had gotten in touch while in the Police Depart- 
ment ; men such as James Bronson Reynolds, through whom 
I first became interested in settlement work on the East 
Side. Once or twice I went suddenly down to New York City 
without warning any one and traversed the tenement-house 
quarters, visiting various sweat-shops picked at random. 
Jake Riis accompanied me ; and as a result of our inspec- 
tion we got not only an improvement in the law but a still 
more marked improvement in its administration. Thanks 
chiefly to the activity and good sense of Dr. John H. Pryor, of 
Buffalo, and by the use of every pound of pressure which as 
Governor I could bring to bear in legitimate fashion — in- 
cluding a special emergency message — we succeeded in 
getting through a bill providing for the first State hospital 
for incipient tuberculosis. We got valuable laws for the 
farmer; laws preventing the adulteration of food products 
(which laws were equally valuable to the consumer), and 
laws helping the dairyman. In addition to labor legislation 
I was able to do a good deal for forest preservation and the 
protection of our wild life. All that later I strove for in the 
Nation in connection with Conservation was foreshadowed 
by what I strove to obtain for New York State when I was 
Governor; and I was already working in connection with 
Gifford Pinchot and Newell. I secured better administra- 
tion, and some improvement in the laws themselves. The 
improvement in administration, and in the character of 
the game and forest wardens, was secured partly as the result 
of a conference in the executive chamber which I held with 
forty of the best guides and woodsmen of the Adirondacks. 



314 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

As regards most legislation, even that affecting labor and 
the forests, I got on fairly well with the machine. But on 
the two issues in which "big business" and the kind of 
politics which is allied to big business were most involved we 
clashed hard — and clashing with Senator Piatt meant 
clashing with the entire Republican organization, and with 
the organized majority in each house of the Legislature. 
One clash was in connection with the Superintendent of 
Insurance, a man whose office made him a factor of immense 
importance in the big business circles of New York. The 
then incumbent of the office was an efficient man, the boss 
of an up-State county, a veteran politician and one of Mr. 
Piatt's right-hand men. Certain investigations which I 
made — in the course of the fight — showed that this 
Superintendent of Insurance had been engaged in large busi- 
ness operations in New York City. These operations had 
thrown him into a peculiarly intimate business contact of 
one sort and another with various financiers with whom I 
did not deem it expedient that the Superintendent of Insur- 
ance, while such, should have any intimate and secret money- 
making relations. Moreover, the gentleman in question 
represented the straitest sect of the old-time spoils politicians. 
I therefore determined not to reappoint him. Unless I 
could get his successor confirmed, however, he would stay in 
under the law, and the Republican machine, with the assist- 
ance of Tammany, expected to control far more than a ma- 
jority of all the Senators. 

Mr. Piatt issued an ultimatum to me that the incumbent 
must be reappointed or else that he would fight, and that if 
he chose to fight the man would stay in anyhow because I 
could not oust him — for under the New York Constitution 
the assent of the Senate was necessary not only to appoint a 
man to office but to remove him from office. As always with 
Mr. Piatt, I persistently refused to lose my temper, no 
matter what he said — he was much too old and physically 
feeble for there to be any point of honor in taking up any of 
his remarks — and I merely explained good-humoredly that 
I had made up my mind and that the gentleman in question 
would not be retained. As for not being able to get his sue- 



THE NEW YORK GOVERNORSHIP 315 

cesser confirmed, I pointed out that as soon as the Legisla- 
ture adjourned I could and would appoint another man 
temporarily. Mr. Piatt then said that the incumbent 
would be put back as soon as the Legislature reconvened ; 
I admitted that this was possible, but added cheerfully that 
I would remove him again just as soon as that Legislature 
adjourned, and that even though I had an uncomfortable 
time myself, I would guarantee to make my opponents more 
uncomfortable still. We parted without any sign of reach- 
ing an agreement. 

There remained some weeks before final action could be 
taken, and the Senator was confident that I would have to 
yield. His most efficient allies were the pretended reformers, 
most of them my open or covert enemies, who loudly insisted 
that I must make an open fight on the Senator himself 
and on the Republican organization. This was what he 
wished, for at that time there was no way of upsetting him 
within the Republican party; and, as I have said, if I had 
permitted the contest to assume the shape of a mere faction 
fight between the Governor and the United States Senator, 
I would have insured the victory of the machine. So I 
blandly refused to let the thing become a personal fight, ex- 
plaining again and again that I was perfectly willing to 
appoint an organization man, and naming two or three whom 
I was willing to appoint, but also explaining that I would 
not retain the incumbent, and would not appoint any man 
of his type. Meanwhile pressure on behalf of the said in- 
cumbent began to come from the business men of New York. 

The Superintendent of Insurance was not a man whose ill 
will the big life insurance companies cared to incur, and 
company after company passed resolutions asking me to 
reappoint him, although in private some of the men who 
signed these resolutions nervously explained that they did 
not mean what they had written, and hoped I would remove 
the man. A citizen prominent in reform circles, marked by 
the Cato-like austerity of his reform professions, had a son 
who was a counsel for one of the insurance companies. The 
father was engaged in writing letters to the papers demand- 
ing in the name of uncompromising virtue that I should not 



3i6 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

only get rid of the Superintendent of Insurance, but in his 
place should appoint somebody or other personally offensive 
to Senator Piatt — which last proposition, if adopted, would 
have meant that the Superintendent of Insurance would have 
stayed in, for the reasons I have already given. Meanwhile 
the son came to see me on behalf of the insurance company 
he represented and told me that the company was anxious 
that there should be a change in the superintendency ; that 
if I really meant to fight, they thought they had influence with 
four of the State Senators, Democrats and Republicans, 
whom they could get to vote to confirm the man I nominated, 
but that they wished to be sure that I would not abandon the 
fight, because it would be a very bad thing for them if I 
started the fight and then backed down. I told my visitor 
that he need be under no apprehensions, that I would cer- 
tainly see the fight through. A man who has much to do with 
that kind of politics which concerns both New York politi- 
cians and New York business men and lawyers is not easily 
surprised, and therefore I felt no other emotion than a rather 
sardonic amusement when thirty-six hours later I read in the 
morning paper an open letter from the officials of the very 
company who had been communicating with me in which 
they enthusiastically advocated the renomination of the 
Superintendent. Shortly afterwards my visitor, the young 
lawyer, called me up on the telephone and explained that 
the officials did not mean what they had said in this letter, 
that they had been obliged to write it for fear of the Super- 
intendent, but that if they got the chance they intended to 
help me get rid of him. I thanked him and said I thought 
I could manage the fight by myself. I did not hear from 
him again, though his father continued to write public 
demands that I should practice pure virtue, undefiled and 
offensive. 

Meanwhile Senator Piatt declined to yield. I had picked 
out a man, a friend of his, who I believed would make an 
honest and competent official, and whose position in the 
organization was such that I did not believe the Senate would 
venture to reject him. However, up to the day before the 
appointment was to go to the Senate, Mr. Piatt remained 



THE NEW YORK GOVERNORSHIP 317 

unyielding. I saw him that afternoon and tried to get 
him to yield, but he said No, that if I insisted, it would be 
war to the knife, and my destruction, and perhaps the 
destruction of the party. I said I was very sorry, that I 
could not yield, and if the war came it would have to come, 
and that next morning I should send in the name of the 
Superintendent's successor. We parted, and soon after- 
wards I received from the man who was at the moment Mr. 
Piatt's right-hand lieutenant a request to know where he 
could see me that evening. I appointed the Union League 
Club. My visitor went over the old ground, explained that 
the Senator would under no circumstances yield, that he 
was certain to win in the fight, that my reputation would be 
destroyed, and that he wished to save me from such a lamen- 
table smash-up as an ending to my career. I could only 
repeat what I had already said, and after half an hour of 
futile argument I rose and said that nothing was to be 
gained by further talk and that I might as well go. My 
visitor repeated that I had this last chance, and that ruin 
was ahead of me if I refused it ; whereas, if I accepted, every- 
thing would be made easy. I shook my head and answered, 
"There is nothing to add to what I have already said." 
He responded, "You have made up your mind .^" and I said, 
"I have." He then said, "You know it means your ruin .^" 
and I answered, "Well, we will see about that," and walked 
toward the door. He said, "You understand, the fight will 
begin to-morrow and will be carried on to the bitter end." 
I said, "Yes," and added, as I reached the door, "Good 
night." Then, as the door opened, my opponent, or visitor, 
whichever one chooses to call him, whose face was as im- 
passive and as inscrutable as that of Mr. John Hamlin in a 
poker game, said : "Hold on ! We accept. Send in So-and- 
so [the man I had named]. The Senator is very sorry, but 
he will make no further opposition !" I never saw a bluff 
carried more resolutely through to the final limit. My 
success in the affair, coupled with the appointment of 
Messrs. Partridge and Hooker, secured me against further 
effort to interfere with my handling of the executive de- 
partments. 



3i8 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

It was In connection with the Insurance business that I 
first met Mr. George W. Perkins. He came to me with a 
letter of Introduction from the then Speaker of the National 
House of Representatives, Tom Reed, which ran: "Mr. 
Perkins is a personal friend of mine, whose straightforward- 
ness and Intelligence will commend to you whatever he has 
to say. If you will give him proper opportunity to explain 
his business, I have no doubt that what he will say will be 
worthy of your attention." Mr. Perkins wished to see me 
with reference to a bill that had just been introduced in the 
Legislature, which aimed to limit the aggregate volume of 
Insurance that any New York State company could assume. 
There were then three big Insurance companies in New York 
— the Mutual Life, Equitable, and New York Life. Mr. 
Perkins was a Vice-President of the New York Life Insur- 
ance Company and Mr. John A. McCall was its President. 
I had just finished my fight against the Superintendent of 
Insurance, whom I refused to continue in office. Mr. 
McCall had written me a very strong letter urging that he be 
retained, and had done everything he could to aid Senator 
Piatt in securing his retention. The Mutual Life and Equi- 
table people had openly followed the same course, but in 
private had hedged. They were both backing the proposed 
bill. Mr. McCall was opposed to it; he was in California, 
and just before starting thither he had been told by the 
Mutual Life and Equitable that the Limitation Bill was 
favored by me and would be put through If such a thing were 
possible. Mr. McCall did not know me, and on leaving for 
California told Mr. Perkins that from all he could learn he 
was sure I was bent on putting this bill through, and that 
nothing he could say to me would change my view ; in fact, 
because he had fought so hard to retain the old Insurance 
Superintendent, he felt that I would be particularly opposed 
to anything he might wish done. 

As a matter of fact, I had no such feeling. I had been 
carefully studying the question. I had talked with the 
Mutual Life and Equitable people about It, but was not 
committed to any particular course, and had grave doubts 
as to whether it was well to draw the line on size instead of 



THE NEW YORK GOVERNORSHIP 319 

on conduct. I was therefore very glad to see Perkins and 
get a new point of view. I went over the matter with a great 
deal of care and at considerable length, and after we had 
thrashed the matter out pretty fully and Perkins had laid 
before me in detail the methods employed by Austria, 
Germany, Switzerland, and other European countries to 
handle their large insurance companies, I took the position 
that there undoubtedly were evils in the insurance business, 
but that they did not consist in insuring people's lives, for 
that certainly was not an evil ; and I did not see how the real 
evils could be eradicated by limiting or suppressing a com- 
pany's ability to protect an additional number of lives with 
insurance. I therefore announced that I would not favor 
a bill that limited volume of business, and would not sign 
it if it were passed ; but that I favored legislation that would 
make it impossible to place, through agents, policies that 
were ambiguous and misleading, or to pay exorbitant prices 
to agents for business, or to invest policy-holders' money 
in improper securities, or to give power to officers to use the 
company's funds for their own personal profit. In reach- 
ing this determination I was helped by Mr. Loeb, then 
merely a stenographer in my office, but who had already 
attracted my attention both by his efficiency and by his 
loyalty to his former employers, who were for the most 
part my political opponents. Mr. Loeb gave me much 
information about various improper practices in the insur- 
ance business. I began to gather data on the subject, with 
the intention of bringing about corrective legislation, for 
at that time I expected to continue in office as Governor. 
But in a few weeks I was nominated as Vice-President, and 
my successor did nothing about the matter. 

So far as I remember, this was the first time the question 
of correcting evils in a business by limiting the volume of 
business to be done was ever presented to me, and my deci- 
sion in the matter was on all fours with the position I have 
always since taken when any similar principle was involved. 
At the time when I made my decision about the Limitation 
Bill, I was on friendly terms with the Mutual and Equitable 
people who were back of it, whereas I did not know Mr. 



320 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



McCall at all, and Mr. Perkins only from hearing him 
discuss the bill. 

An interesting feature of the matter developed subse- 
quently. Five years later, after the insurance investigations 
took place, the Mutual Life strongly urged the passage of a 
Limitation Bill, and, because of the popular feeling developed 
by the exposure of the improper practices of the companies, 

this bill was generally ap- 
proved. Governor Hughes 
adopted the suggestion, such 
a bill was passed by the 
Legislature, and Governor 
Hughes signed it. This 
bill caused the three great 
New York companies to re- 
duce markedly the volume 
of business they were doing ; 
it threw a great many agents 
out of employment, and 
materially curtailed the for- 
eign business of the com- 
panies — which business was 
bringing annually a con- 
siderable sum of money to 
this country for investment. 
In short, the experiment 
worked so badly that before 
Governor Hughes went out 
of office one of the very last bills he signed was one that 
permitted the life insurance companies to increase their 
business each year by an amount representing a certain 
percentage of the business they had previously done. This 
in practice, within a few years, practically annulled the 
Limitation Bill that had been previously passed. The 
experiment of limiting the size of business, of legislating 
against it merely because it was big, had been tried, and 
had failed so completely that the authors of the bill had 
themselves in eflfect repealed it. My action in refusing to 
try the experiment had been completely justified. 




George Perkins. 

" I got Mr. Perkins to serve on the Palisade 
Park Commission ... to save the 
Palisades from vandalism." 



THE NEW YORK GOVERNORSHIP 321 

As a sequel to this incident I got Mr. Perkins to serve on 
the Palisade Park Commission. At the time I was taking 
active part in the effort to save the Palisades from vandalism 
and destruction by getting the States of New York and New 
Jersey jointly to include them in a public park. It is not 
easy to get a responsible and capable man of business to 
undertake such a task, which is unpaid, which calls on his 
part for an immense expenditure of time, money, and energy, 
which offers no reward of any kind, and which entails the 
certainty of abuse and misrepresentation. Mr. Perkins 
accepted the position, and has filled it for the last thirteen 
years, doing as disinterested, efficient, and useful a bit of 
public service as any man in the State has done throughout 
these thirteen years. 

The case of most importance in which I clashed with 
Senator Piatt related to a matter of fundamental govern- 
mental policy, and was the first step I ever took toward 
bringing big corporations under effective governmental 
control. In this case I had to fight the Democratic machine 
as well as the Republican machine, for Senator Hill and 
Senator Piatt were equally opposed to my action, and the 
big corporation men, the big business men back of both of 
them, took precisely the same view of these matters without 
regard to their party feelings on other points. What I did 
convulsed people at that time, and marked the beginning 
of the effort, at least in the Eastern states, to make the 
great corporations really responsible to popular wish and 
governmental command. But we have gone so far past the 
stage in which we then were that now it seems well-nigh 
incredible that there should have been any opposition at all 
to what I at that time proposed. 

The substitution of electric power for horse power in the 
street car lines of New York offered a fruitful chance for the 
most noxious type of dealing between business men and 
politicians. The franchises granted by New York were 
granted without any attempt to secure from the grantees 
returns, in the way of taxation or otherwise, for the value 
received. The fact that they were thus granted by improper 
favoritism, a favoritism which in many cases was unques- 

Y 



322 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

tionably secured by downright bribery, led to all kinds of 
trouble. In return for the continuance of these improper 
favors to the corporations the politicians expected improper 
favors in the way of excessive campaign contributions, often 
contributed by the same corporation at the same time to 
two opposing parties. Before I became Governor a bill 
had been introduced into the New York Legislature to tax 
the franchises of these street railways. It affected a large 
number of corporations, but particularly those in New York 
and Buffalo. It had been suffered to slumber undisturbed, 
as none of the people in power dreamed of taking it seriously, 
and both the Republican and Democratic machines were 
hostile to it. Under the rules of the New York Legislature 
a bill could always be taken up out of its turn and passed if 
the Governor sent in a special emergency message on its 
behalf. 

After I was elected Governor I had my attention directed 
to the franchise tax matter, looked into the subject, and 
came to the conclusion that it was a matter of plain decency 
and honesty that these companies should pay a tax on their 
franchises, inasmuch as they did nothing that could be con- 
sidered as service rendered the public in lieu of a tax. This 
seemed to me so evidently the common-sense and decent 
thing to do that I was hardly prepared for the storm of 
protest and anger which my proposal aroused. Senator 
Piatt and the other machine leaders did everything to get 
me to abandon my intention. As usual, I saw them, talked 
the matter all over with them, and did my best to convert 
them to my way of thinking. Senator Piatt, I believe, was 
quite sincere in his opposition. He did not believe in popu- 
lar rule, and he did believe that the big business men were 
entitled to have things their way. He profoundly distrusted 
the people — naturally enough, for the kind of human na- 
ture with which a boss comes in contact is not of an exalted 
type. He felt that anarchy would come if there was any 
interference with a system by which the people in mass 
were, under various necessary cloaks, controlled by the 
leaders in the political and business worlds. He wrote me 
a very strong letter of protest against my attitude, expressed 



THE NEW YORK GOVERNORSHIP 323 

in dignified, friendly, and temperate language, but using 
one word in a curious way. This was the word "altruistic." 
He stated in his letter that he had not objected to my being 
independent in politics, because he had been sure that I 
had the good of the party at heart, and meant to act fairly 
and honorably; but that he had been warned, before I be- 
came a candidate, by a number of his business friends that 
I was a dangerous man because I was "altruistic," and that 
he now feared that my conduct would justify the alarm thus 
expressed. I was interested in this, not only because Sena- 
tor Piatt was obviously sincere, but because of the way in 
which he used "altruistic" as a term of reproach, as if it 
was Communistic or Socialistic — the last being a word he 
did use to me when, as now and then happened, he thought 
that my proposals warranted fairly reckless vituperation. 
Senator Piatt's letter ran in part as follows : 

"When the subject of your nomination was under con- 
sideration, there was one matter that gave me real anxiety. 
I think you will have no trouble in appreciating the fact 
that it was not the matter of your independence. I think 
we have got far enough along in our political acquaintance 
for you to see that my support in a convention does not 
imply subsequent 'demands,' nor any other relation that 
may not reasonably exist for the welfare of the party. . . . 
The thing that did bother me was this : I had heard from a 
good many sources that you were a little loose on the rela- 
tions of capital and labor, on trusts and combinations, and, 
indeed, on those numerous questions which have recently 
arisen in politics affecting the security of earnings and the 
right of a man to run his own business in his own way, with 
due respect of course to the Ten Commandments and the 
Penal Code. Or, to get at it even more clearly, I under- 
stood from a number of business men, and among them 
many of your own personal friends, that you entertained 
various altruistic ideas, all very well in their way, but which 
before they could safely be put into law needed very pro- 
found consideration. . . . You have just adjourned a Legis- 
lature which created a good opinion throughout the State. 



324 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

I congratulate you heartily upon this fact because I sincerely 
believe, as everybody else docs, that this good impression 
exists, very largely as a result of your personal influence in 
the Legislative chambers. But at the last moment, and to 
my very great surprise, you did a thing which has caused the 
business community of New York to wonder how far the 
notions of Populism, as laid down in Kansas and Nebraska, 
have taken hold upon the Republican party of the State 
of New York." 

In my answer I pointed out to the Senator that I had as 
Governor unhesitatingly acted, at Buff'alo and elsewhere, 
to put down mobs, without regard to the fact that the pro- 
fessed leaders of labor furiously denounced me for so doing ; 
but that I could no more tolerate wrong committed in the 
name of property than wrong committed against property. 
My letter ran in part as follows : "I knew that you had just 
the feelings that you describe; that is, apart from my 'im- 
pulsiveness,' you felt that there was a justifiable anxiety 
among men of means, and especially men representing large 
corporate interests, lest I might feel too strongly on what you 
term the 'altruistic' side in matters of labor and capital and 
as regards the relations of the State to great corporations, 
... I know that when parties divide on such issues 
[as Bryanism] the tendency is to force everybody into one of 
two camps, and to throw out entirely men like myself, who 
are as strongly opposed to Populism in every stage as the 
greatest representative of corporate wealth, but who also 
feel strongly that many of these representatives of enormous 
corporate wealth have themselves been responsible for a 
portion of the conditions against which Bryanism is in 
ignorant revolt. I do not believe that it is wise or safe for 
us as a party to take refuge in mere negation and to say that 
there are no evils to be corrected. It seems to me that our 
attitude should be one of correcting the evils and thereby 
showing that, whereas the Populists, Socialists, and others 
really do not correct the evils at all, or else only do so at the 
expense of producing others in aggravated form, on the 
contrary we Republicans hold the just balance and set 



THE NEW YORK GOVERNORSHIP 325 

ourselves as resolutely against improper corporate influence 
on the one hand as against demagogy and mob rule on the 
other. I understand perfectly that such an attitude of 
moderation is apt to be misunderstood when passions are 
greatly excited and when victory is apt to rest with the 
extremists on one side or the other; yet I think it is in the 
long run the only wise attitude. ... I appreciate abso- 
lutely [what Mr. Piatt had said] that any applause I get will 
be too evanescent for a moment's consideration. I appre- 
ciate absolutely that the people who now loudly approve of 
my action in the franchise tax bill will forget all about it in a 
fortnight, and that, on the other hand, the very powerful 
interests adversely affected will always remember it. . . . 
[The leaders] urged upon me that I personally could not 
afford to take this action, for under no circumstances could 
I ever again be nominated for any public office, as no cor- 
poration would subscribe to a campaign fund if I was on the 
ticket, and that they would subscribe most heavily to beat 
me ; and when I asked if this were true of Republican cor- 
porations, the cynical answer was made that the corporations 
that subscribed most heavily to the campaign funds sub- 
scribed impartially to both party organizations. Under all 
these circumstances, it seemed to me there was no alter- 
native but to do what I could to secure the passage of the 
bill." 

These two letters, written in the spring of 1899, express 
clearly the views of the two elements of the Republican party, 
whose hostility gradually grew until it culminated, thirteen 
years later. In 191 2 the political and financial forces of 
which Mr. Piatt had once been the spokesman, usurped 
the control of the party machinery and drove out of the party 
the men who were loyally endeavoring to apply the principles 
of the founders of the party to the needs and issues of their 
own day. 

I had made up my mind that if I could get a show in the 
Legislature the bill would pass, because the people had be- 
come interested and the representatives would scarcely dare 
to vote the wrong way. Accordingly, on April 27, 1899, I 
sent a special message to the Assembly, certifying that the 



326 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

emergency demanded the immediate passage of the bill. 
The machine leaders were bitterly angry, and the Speaker 
actually tore up the message without reading it to the 
Assembly. That night they were busy trying to arrange 
some device for the defeat of the bill — which was not 
difficult, as the session was about to close. At seven the 
next morning I was informed of what had occurred. At 
eight I was in the Capitol at the Executive chamber, and 
sent in another special message, which opened as follows : 
"I learn that the emergency message which I sent last 
evening to the Assembly on behalf of the Franchise Tax 
Bill has not been read. I therefore send hereby another 
message on the subject. I need not impress upon the 
Assembly the need of passing this bill at once." I sent this 
message to the Assembly, by my secretary, William J. 
Youngs, afterwards United States District Attorney of 
Kings, with an intimation that if this were not promptly 
read I should come up in person and read it. Then, as so 
often happens, the opposition collapsed and the bill went 
through both houses with a rush. I had in the House stanch 
friends, such as Regis Post and Alford Cooley, men of charac- 
ter and courage, who would have fought to a finish had the 
need arisen. 

My troubles were not at an end, however. The bill put 
the taxation in the hands of the local county boards, and as 
the railways sometimes passed through several different 
counties, this was inadvisable. It was the end of the 
session, and the Legislature adjourned. The corporations 
aifected, through various counsel, and the different party 
leaders of both organizations, urged me not to sign the 
bill, laying especial stress on this feature, and asking that I 
wait until the following year, when a good measure could be 
put through with this obnoxious feature struck out. I had 
thirty days under the law in which to sign the bill. If I 
did not sign it by the end of that time it would not become a 
law. I answered my political and corporation friends by 
telling them that I agreed with them that this feature was 
wrong, but that I'would rather have the bill with this feature 
than not have it at all ; and that T was not willing to trust 



THE NEW YORK GOVERNORSHIP 327 

to what might be done a year later. Therefore, I explained, 
I would reconvene the Legislature in special session, and if 
the legislators chose to amend the bill by placing the power 
of taxation in the State instead of in the county or munici- 
pality, I would be glad ; but that if they failed to amend 
it, or amended it improperly, I would sign the original bill 
and let it become law as it was. 

When the representatives of Mr. Piatt and of the corpora- 
tions affected found they could do no better, they assented 
to this proposition. Efforts were tentatively made to out- 
wit me, by inserting amendments that would nullify the 
effect of the law, or by withdrawing the law when the Legis- 
lature convened ; which would at once have deprived me of 
the whip hand. On May 12 I wrote Senator Piatt, outlining 
the amendments I desired, and said : "Of course it must be 
understood that I will sign the present bill if the proposed 
bill containing the changes outlined above fails to pass." 
On May 18 I notified the Senate leader, John Raines, by 
telegram: "Legislature has no power to withdraw the 
Ford bill. If attempt is made to do so, I will sign the bill 
at once." On the same day, by telegram, I wired Mr. Odell 
concerning the bill the leaders were preparing: "Some 
provisions of bill very objectionable. I am at work on bill 
to show you to-morrow. The bill must not contain greater 
changes than those outlined in my message." My wishes 
were heeded, and when I had reconvened the Legislature 
it amended the bill as I outlined in my message ; and in its 
amended form the bill became law. 

There promptly followed something which afforded an 
index of the good faith of the corporations that had been 
protesting to me. As soon as the change for which they 
had begged was inserted In the law, and the law was signed, 
they turned round and refused to pay the taxes ; and in the 
lawsuit that followed, they claimed that the law was uncon- 
stitutional, because it contained the very clause which they 
had so clamorously demanded. Senator David B. Hill had 
appeared before me on behalf of the corporations to argue 
for the change ; and he then appeared before the courts to 
make the argument on the other side. The suit was carried 



328 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

through to the Supreme Court of the United States, which 
declared the law constitutional during the time that I was 
President. 

One of the painful duties of the chief executive in States 
like New York, as well as in the Nation, is the refusing of 
pardons. Yet I can imagine nothing more necessary from 
the standpoint of good citizenship than the ability to steel 
one's heart in this matter of granting pardons. The pressure 
is always greatest in two classes of cases : first, that where 
capital punishment is inflicted ; second, that where the man 
is prominent socially and in the business world, and where in 
consequence his crime is apt to have been one concerned in 
some way with finance. 

As regards capital cases, the trouble is that emotional 
men and women always see only the individual whose fate 
is up at the moment, and neither his victim nor the many 
millions of unknown individuals who would in the long run 
be harmed by what they ask. Moreover, almost any crimi- 
nal, however brutal, has usually some person, often a person 
whom he has greatly wronged, who will plead for him. 'If 
the mother is alive she will always come, and she cannot 
help feeling that the case in which she is so concerned is 
peculiar, that in this case a pardon should be granted. It 
was really heartrending to have to see the kinsfolk and friends 
of murderers who were condemned to death, and among the 
very rare occasions when anything governmental or official 
caused me to lose sleep were the times when I had to listen 
to some poor mother making a plea for a criminal so wicked, 
so utterly brutal and depraved, that it would have been a 
crime on my part to remit his punishment. 

On the other hand, there were certain crimes where re- 
quests for leniency merely made me angry. Such crimes 
were, for instance, rape, or the circulation of indecent litera- 
ture, or anything connected with what would now be called 
the "white slave" traffic, or wife murder, or gross cruelty to 
women and children, or seduction and abandonment, or the 
action of some man in getting a girl whom he had seduced to 
commit abortion. I am speaking in each instance of cases 
that actually came before me, either while I was Governor or 



THE NEW YORK GOVERNORSHIP 329 

while I was President. In an astonishing number of these 
cases men of high standing signed petitions or wrote letters 
asking me to show leniency to the criminal. In two or three 
of the cases — one where some young roughs had committed 
rape on a helpless immigrant girl, and another in which a 
physician of wealth and high standing had seduced a girl and 
then induced her to commit abortion — I rather lost my 
temper, and wrote to the individuals who had asked for the 
pardon, saying that I extremely regretted that it was not in 
my power to increase the sentence. I then let the facts be 
made public, for I thought that my petitioners deserved 
public censure. Whether they received this public censure 
or not I did not know, but that my action made them very 
angry I do know, and their anger gave me real satisfaction. 
The list of these petitioners was a fairly long one, and in- 
cluded two United States Senators, a Governor of a State, 
two judges, an editor, and some eminent lawyers and busi- 
ness men. 

In the class of cases where the offense was one involving 
the misuse of large sums of money the reason for the pressure 
was different. Cases of this kind more frequently came 
before me when I was President, but they also came before 
me when I was Governor, chiefly in the cases of county 
treasurers who had embezzled funds. A big bank president, 
a railway magnate, an official connected with some big 
corporation, or a Government official in a responsible fiduci- 
ary position, necessarily belongs among the men who have 
succeeded in life. This means that his family are living in 
comfort, and perhaps luxury and refinement, and that his 
sons and daughters have been well educated. In such a case 
the misdeed of the father comes as a crushing disaster to the 
wife and children, and the people of the community, however 
bitter originally against the man, grow to feel the most 
intense sympathy for the bowed-down women and children 
who suffer for the man's fault. It is a dreadful thing in life 
that so much of atonement for wrong-doing is vicarious. 
If it were possible in such a case to think only of the banker's 
or county treasurer's wife and children, any man would 
pardon the offender at once. Unfortunately, it is not right 



330 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

to think only of the women and children. The very fact 
that in cases of this class there is certain to be pressure from 
high sources, pressure sometimes by men who have been 
beneficially, even though remotely, interested in the man's 
criminality, no less than pressure because of honest sympathy 
with the wife and children, makes it necessary that the 
good public servant shall, no matter how deep his sympathy 
and regret, steel his heart and do his duty by refusing to let 
the wrong-doer out. My experience of the way in which 
pardons are often granted is one of the reasons why I do not 
believe that life imprisonment for murder and rape is a 
proper substitute for the death penalty. The average term of 
so-called life imprisonment in this country is only about 
fourteen years. 

Of course there were cases where I either commuted sen- 
tences or pardoned offenders with very real pleasure. For 
instance, when President, I frequently commuted sentences 
for horse stealing in the Indian Territory because the penalty 
for stealing a horse was disproportionate to the penalty for 
many other crimes, and the offense was usually committed 
by some ignorant young fellow who found a half-wild horse, 
and really did not commit anything like as serious an 
offense as the penalty indicated. The judges would be 
obliged to give the minimum penalty, but would forward 
me memoranda stating that if there had been a less penalty 
they would have inflicted it, and I would then commute 
the sentence to the penalty thus indicated. 

In one case in New York I pardoned outright a man con- 
victed of murder in the second degree, and I did this on the 
recommendation of a friend, Father Doyle of the Paulist 
Fathers. I had become intimate with the Paulist Fathers 
while I was Police Commissioner, and I had grown to feel 
confidence in their judgment, for I had found that they al- 
ways told me exactly what the facts were about any man, 
whether he belonged to their church or not. In this case the 
convicted man was a strongly built, respectable old Irish- 
man employed as a watchman around some big cattle-killing 
establishments. The young roughs of the neighborhood, 
which was then of a rather lawless type, used to try to destroy 



THK NEW YORK GOVERNORSHIP 



331 



the property of the companies. In a conflict with a watch- 
man a member of one of the gangs was slain. The watchman 
was acquitted, hut the neighborhood was much wrought up 
over the acquittal. Shortly afterwards, a gang of the same 
roughs attacked another watchman, the old Irishman in 
question, and finally, to save 



his own life, he was obliged 
in self-defense to kill one of 
his assailants. The feeling 
in the community, however, 
was strongly against him, 
and some of the men high up 
in the corporation became 
frightened and thought that 
it would be better to throw 
over the watchman. He was 
convicted. Father Doyle 
came to me, told me that 
he knew the man well, that 
he was one of the best mem- 
bers of his church, admi- 
rable in every way, that he 
had simply been forced to 
fight for his life while loyally 
doing his duty, and that 
the conviction represented 
the triumph of the tough 
element of the district and 
the abandonment of this 
man, by those who should 
have stood by him, under the influence of an unworthy 
fear. I looked into the case, came to the conclusion that 
Father Doyle was right, and gave the man a full pardon 
before he had served thirty days. 

The various clashes between myself and the machine, 
my triumph in them, and the fact that the people were 
getting more and more interested and aroused, brought on a 
curious situation in the Republican National Convention at 
Philadelphia in June, 1900. Senator Piatt and the New 




I'ATHKR UuYLK of the PaULCST I'ATHKKS. 

I had become very intimate with the Pduiist 
I'"athers while I was Police Commissioner." 



332 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

York machine leaders had become very anxious to get me 
out of the Governorship, chiefly because of the hostility of 
the big corporation men towards me ; but they had also 
become convinced that there was such popular feeling on my 
behalf that it would be difficult to refuse me a renomination 
if I demanded it. They accordingly decided to push me for 
Vice-President, taking advantage of the fact that there was 
at that time a good deal of feeling for me in the country at 
large. ^ I myself did not appreciate that there was any such 
feeling, and as I greatly disliked the office of Vice-President 
and was much interested in the Governorship, I announced 
that I would not accept the Vice-Presidency. I was one 
of the delegates to Philadelphia. On reaching there I 
found that the situation was complicated. Senator Hanna 
appeared on the surface to have control of the Convention. 
He was anxious that I should not be nominated as Vice- 
President. Senator Piatt was anxious that I should be 
nominated as Vice-President, in order to get me out of the 
New York Governorship. Each took a position opposite 
to that of the other, but each at that time cordially sympa- 
thized with the other's feelings about me — it was the mani- 
festations and not the feelings that differed. My sup- 
porters in New York State did not wish me nominated for 
Vice-President because they wished me to continue as Gov- 
ernor; but in every other State all the people who admired 
me were bound that I should be nominated as Vice-President. 
These people were almost all desirous of seeing Mr. McKin- 
ley renominated as President, but they became angry at 
Senator Hanna's opposition to me as Vice-President. 
He in his turn suddenly became aware that if he persisted 
he might find that in their anger these men would oppose 
Mr. McKinley's renomination, and although they could 
not have prevented the nomination, such opposition would 
have been a serious blow in the campaign which was to 
follow. Senator Hanna, therefore, began to waver. 

Meanwhile a meeting of the New York delegation was 
called. Most of the delegates were under the control of 
Senator Piatt. The Senator notified me that if I refused to 

^ See Appendix B to this chapter. 



THE NEW YORK GOVERNORSHIP 333 

accept the nomination for Vice-President I would be beaten 
for the nomination for Governor. I answered that I would 
accept the challenge, that we would have a straight-out 
fight on the proposition, and that I would begin it at once 
by telling the assembled delegates of the threat, and giving 
fair warning that I intended to fight for the Governorship 
nomination, and, moreover, that I intended to get it. This 
brought Senator Piatt to terms. The effort to instruct the 
New York delegation for me was abandoned, and Lieutenant- 
Governor Woodruff was presented for nomination in my place. 

I supposed that this closed the incident, and that no 
further effort would be made to nominate me for the Vice- 
Presidency. On the contrary, the eflFect was directly the re- 
verse. The upset of the New York machine increased the 
feeling of the delegates from other States that it was neces- 
sary to draft me for the nomination. By next day Senator 
Hanna himself concluded that this was a necessity, and 
acquiesced in the movement. As New York was already 
committed against me, and as I was not willing that there 
should be any chance of supposing that the New Yorkers 
had nominated me to get rid of me, the result was that I was 
nominated and seconded from outside States. No other 
candidate was placed in the field. 

By this time the Legislature had adjourned, and most of 
my work as Governor of New York was over. One unex- 
pected bit of business arose, however. It was the year of the 
Presidential campaign. Tammany, which had been luke- 
warm about Bryan in 1896, cordially supported him in 1900; 
and when Tammany heartily supports a candidate it is well 
for the opposing candidate to keep a sharp lookout for elec- 
tion frauds. The city government was in the hands of 
Tammany; but I had power to remove the Mayor, the 
Sheriff, and the District Attorney for malfeasance or mis- 
feasance in office. Such power had not been exercised by 
any previous Governor, as far as I knew ; but it existed, and 
if the misfeasance or malfeasance warranted it, and if the 
Governor possessed the requisite determination, the power 
could be, and ought to be, exercised. 

By an Act of the Legislature, a State Bureau of Elections 



334 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

had been created in New York City, and a Superintendent of 
Elections appointed by the Governor. The Chief of the 
State Bureau of Elections was John McCullagh, formerly in 
the Police Department when I was Police Commissioner. 
The Chief of Police for the city was William F. Devery, one 
of the Tammany leaders, who represented in the Police 
Department all that I had warred against while Commis- 
sioner. On November 4 Devery directed his subordinates in 
the Police Department to disregard the orders which Mc- 
Cullagh had given to his deputies, orders which were essen- 
tial if we were to secure an honest election in the city. 
I had just returned from a Western campaign trip, and was 
at Sagamore Hill. I had no direct power over Devery ; 
but the Mayor had ; and I had power over the Mayor. 
Accordingly, I at once wrote to the Mayor of New York, to 
the Sheriff of New York, and to the District Attorney of 
New York County the following letters : 

STATE OF NEW YORK 

Oyster Bay, November 5, 1900. 

To the Mayor of the City of New York. 

Sir : My attention has been called to the official order 
issued by Chief of Police Devery, in which he directs his 
subordinates to disregard the Chief of the State Election 
Bureau, John McCullagh, and his deputies. Unless you 
have already taken steps to secure the recall of this order, 
it is necessary for me to point out that I shall be obliged 
to hold you responsible as the head of the city government 
for the action of the Chief of Police, if it should result in 
any breach of the peace and intimidation or any crime what- 
ever against the election laws. The State and city au- 
thorities should work together. I will not fail to call to sum- 
mary account cither State or city authority in the event 
of either being guilty of intimidation or connivance at fraud 
or of failure to protect every legal voter in his rights. I 
therefore hereby notify you that in the event of any wrong- 
doing following upon the failure immediately to recall Chief 



THE NEW YORK GOVERNORSHIP 335 

Devery's order, or upon any action or Inaction on the part 
of Chief Devery, I must necessarily call you to account. 

Yours, etc., 

Theodore Roosevelt. 



STATE OF NEW YORK 

Oyster Bay, November 5, 1900. 

To the Sheriff oj the County of New York. 

Sir : My attention has been called to the official order 
issued by Chief of Police Devery in which he directs his 
subordinates to disregard the Chief of the State Election 
Bureau, John McCuUagh, and his deputies. 

It is your duty to assist in the orderly enforcement of the 
law, and I shall hold you strictly responsible for any breach 
of the public peace within your county, or for any failure on 
your part to do your full duty in connection with the election 
to-morrow. Yours truly, 

Theodore Roosevelt. 



STATE of new YORK 

Oyster Bay, November 5, 1900. 

To the District Attorney of the County of New York. 

Sir : My attention has been called to the official order 
issued by Chief of Police Devery, in which he directs his 
subordinates to disregard the Chief of the State Election 
Bureau, John McCullagh, and his deputies. 

In view of this order I call your attention to the fact that 
it is your duty to assist in the orderly enforcement of the 
law, and there must be no failure on your part to do your 
full duty in the matter. Yours truly, 

Theodore Roosevelt. 

These letters had the desired effect. The Alayor promptly 
required Chief Devery to rescind the obnoxious order, which 
was as promptly done. The Sheriff also took prompt 



336 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

action. The District Attorney refused to heed my letter, 
and assumed an attitude of defiance, and I removed him 
from office. On election day there was no clash between the 
city and State authorities ; the election was orderly and 
honest. 



APPENDIX A 
CONSERVATION 

As foreshadowing the course I later, as President, followed in 
this matter, I give extracts from one of my letters to the Commis- 
sion, and from my second (and last) Annual Message. I spent the 
first months of my term in investigations to find out just what the 
situation was. 

On November 28, 1899, I wrote to the Commission as follows: 

"... I have had very many complaints before this as to the 
inefficiency of the game wardens and game protectors, the com- 
plaints usually taking the form that the men have been appointed 
and are retained without due regard to the duties to be performed. 
I do not wish a man to be retained or appointed who is not thor- 
oughly fit to perform the duties of game protector. The Adiron- 
dacks are entitled to a peculiar share of the Commission's 
attention, both from the standpoint of forestry, and from the less 
important, but still very important, standpoint of game and fish 
protection. The men who do duty as game protectors in the 
Adirondacks should, by preference, be appointed from the locality 
itself, and should in all cases be thorough woodsmen. The mere 
fact that a game protector has to hire a guide to pilot him through 
the woods is enough to show his unfitness for the position. I want 
as game protectors men of courage, resolution, and hardihood, 
who can handle the rifle, ax, and paddle ; who can camp out in 
summer or winter; who can go on snow-shoes, if necessary; who 
can go through the woods by day or by night without regard to 
trails. 

"I should like full information about all your employees, as to 
their capacities, as to the labor they perform, as to their distri- 
bution from and where they do their work." 

Many of the men hitherto appointed owed their positions prin- 
cipally to political preference. The changes I recommended were 
promptly made, and much to the good of the public service. In 
my Annual Message, in January, 1900, I said : 

"Great progress has been made through the fish hatcheries in 
z 337 



338 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

the propagation of valuable food and sporting fish. The laws for 
the protection of deer have resulted in their increase. Neverthe- 
less, as railroads tend to encroach on the wilderness, the tempta- 
tion to illegal hunting becomes greater, and the danger from forest 
fires increases. There is need of great improvement both in our 
laws and in their administration. The game wardens have been 
too few in number. More should be provided. None save fit 
men must be appointed ; and their retention in office must depend 
purely upon the zeal, ability, and efficiency with which they per- 
form their duties. The game wardens in the forests must be woods- 
men ; and they should have no outside business. In short, there 
should be a thorough reorganization of the work of the Commis- 
sion. A careful study of the resources and condition of the forests 
on State land must be made. It is certainly not too much to 
expect that the State forests should be managed as efficiently as 
the forests on private lands in the same neighborhoods. And the 
measure of difference in efficiency of management must be the 
measure of condemnation or praise of the way the public forests 
have been managed. 

"The subject of forest preservation is of the utmost importance 
to the State. The Adirondacks and Catskills should be great 
parks kept in perpetuity for the benefit and enjoyment of our 
people. Much has been done of late years towards their perserva- 
tion, but very much remains to be done. The provisions of law in 
reference to sawmills and wood-pulp mills are defective and should 
be changed so as to prohibit dumping dye-stuff, sawdust, or tan- 
bark, in any amount whatsoever, into the streams. Reservoirs 
should be made, but not where they will tend to destroy large 
sections of the forest, and only after a careful and scientific study 
of the water resources of the region. The people of the forest 
regions are themselves growing more and more to realize the neces- 
sity of preserving both the trees and the game. A live deer in the 
woods will attract to the neighborhood ten times the money that 
could be obtained for the deer's dead carcass. Timber theft on 
the State lands is, of course, a grave offense against the whole 
public. 

"Hardy outdoor sports, like hunting, are in themselves of no 
small value to the National character and should be encouraged 
in every way. Men who go into the wilderness, indeed, men who 
take part in any field sports with horse or rifle, receive a benefit 
which can hardly be given by even the most vigorous athletic 
games. 

"There is a further and more immediate and practical end in 



APPENDIX 339 

view. A primeval forest is a great sponge which absorbs and 
distills the rain water. And when it is destroyed the result is 
apt to be an alternation of flood and drought. Forest fires ulti- 
mately make the land a desert, and are a detriment to all that por- 
tion of the State tributary to the streams through the woods where 
they occur. Every effort should be made to minimize their 
destructive influence. We need to have our system of forestry 
gradually developed and conducted along scientific principles. 
When this has been done it will be possible to allow marketable 
lumber to be cut everywhere without damage to the forests — 
indeed, with positive advantage to them. But until lumbering is 
thus conducted, on strictly scientific principles no less than upon 
principles of the strictest honesty toward the State, we cannot 
afford to suffer it at all in the State forests. Unrestrained greed 
means the ruin of the great woods and the drying up of the sources 
of the rivers. 

"Ultimately the administration of the State lands must be so 
centralized as to enable us definitely to place responsibility in 
respect to everything concerning them, and to demand the highest 
degree of trained intelligence in their use. 

"The State should not permit within its limits factories to make 
bird skins or bird feathers into articles of ornament or wearing 
apparel. Ordinary birds, and especially song birds, should be 
rigidly protected. Game birds should never be shot to a greater 
extent than will offset the natural rate of increase. . . . Care 
should be taken not to encourage the use of cold storage or other 
market systems which are a benefit to no one but the wealthy 
epicure who can afford to pay a heavy price for luxuries. These 
systems tend to the destruction of the game, which would bear 
most severely upon the very men whose rapacity has been appealed 
to in order to secure its extermination. . . ." 

I reorganized the Commission, putting Austin Wadsworth at its 
head. 



APPENDIX B 

THE POLITICAL SITUATION IN 1900 

My general scheme of action as Governor was given in a letter I 
wrote one of my supporters among the independent district organ- 
ization leaders, Norton Goddard, on April 16, 1900. It runs in 
part as follows: "Nobody can tell, and least of all the machine 



340 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

itself, whether the machine intends to renominate me next fall or 
not. If for some reason I should be weak, whether on account of 
faults or virtues, doubtless the machine will throw me over, and 
I think I am not uncharitable when I say they would feel no acute 
grief at so doing. It would be very strange if they did feel such 
grief. If, for instance, we had strikes which led to riots, I would 
of course be obliged to preserve order and stop the riots. Decent 
citizens would demand that I should do it, and in any event I 
should do it wholly without regard to their demands. But, once 
it was done, they would forget all about it, while a great many 
laboring men, honest but ignorant and prejudiced, would bear a 
grudge against me for doing it. This might put me out of the run- 
ning as a candidate. Again, the big corporations undoubtedly want 
to beat me. They prefer the chance of being blackmailed to the 
certainty that they will not be allowed any more than their due. 
Of course they will try to beat me on some entirely different issue, 
and, as they are very able and very unscrupulous, nobody can tell 
that they won't succeed. ... I have been trying to stay in with 
the organization. I did not do it with the idea that they would 
renominate me. I did it with the idea of getting things done, and 
in that I have been absolutely successful. Whether Senator Piatt 
and Mr. Odell endeavor to beat me, or do beat me, for the renomi- 
nation next fall, is of very small importance compared to the fact 
that for my two years I have been able to make a Republican ma- 
jority in the Legislature do good and decent work and have pre- 
vented any split within the party. The task was one of great 
difficulty, because, on the one hand, I had to keep clearly before 
me the fact that it was better to have a split than to permit bad 
work to be done, and, on the other hand, the fact that to have that 
split would absolutely prevent all good work. The result has been 
that I have avoided a split and that as a net result of my two years 
and the two sessions of the Legislature, there has been an enormous 
improvement in the administration of the Government, and there 
has also been a great advance in legislation." 

To show my reading of the situation at the time I quote from a 
letter of mine to Joseph B. Bishop, then editor of the Commercial 
Advertiser, with whom towards the end of my term I had grown 
into very close relations, and who, together with two other old 
friends, Albert Shaw, of the Review of Reviews, and Silas Mc- 
Bee, now editor of the Constructive Quarterly, knew the inside 
of every movement, so far as I knew it myself. The letter, which 
is dated April 1 1, 1900, runs in part as follows: "The dangerous 
element as far as I am concerned comes from the corporations. 



APPENDIX 341 

The [naming certain men] crowd and those Hke them have been 
greatly exasperated by the franchise tax. They would like to get 
me out of politics for good, but at the moment they think the best 
thing to do is to put me into the Vice-Presidency. Naturally I 
will not be opposed openly on the ground of the corporations' 
grievance ; but every kind of false statement will continually be 
made, and men like [naming the editors of certain newspapers] 
will attack me, not as the enemy of corporations, but as their 
tool ! There is no question whatever that if the leaders can they 
will upset me." 

One position which as Governor (and as President) I consistentl>' 
took, seems to me to represent what ought to be a fundamental principle 
in American legislative work. I steadfastly refused to advocate any 
law, no matter how admirable in theory, if there was good reason to 
believe that in practice it would not be executed. I have always sym- 
pathized with the view set forth by PelatiahWebsterin 17S3 — quoted 
by Hannis Taylor in his Genesis of the Supreme Court — "Laws or 
ordinances of any kind (especially of august bodies of high dignity 
and consequence) which fail of execution, are much worse than 
none. They weaken the government, expose it to contempt, destroy 
the confidence of all men, native and foreigners, in it, and expose 
both aggregate bodies and individuals who have placed confidence 
in it to many ruinous disappointments which they would have es- 
caped had no such law or ordinance been made." This principle, 
by the way, not only applies to an internal law which cannot be 
executed ; it applies even more to international action, such as a 
universal arbitration treaty which cannot and will not be kept; 
and most of all it applies to proposals to make such universal 
arbitration treaties at the very time that we are not keeping our 
solemn promise to execute limited arbitration treaties which we have 
already made. A general arbitration treaty is merely a promise ; 
it represents merely a debt of honorable obligation; and nothing 
is more discreditable, for a nation or an individual, than to cover up 
the repudiation of a debt which can be and ought to be paid, by 
recklessly promising to incur a new and insecure debt which no 
wise man for one moment supposes ever will be paid. 



CHAPTER IX 

OUTDOORS AND INDOORS 

THERE are men who love out-of-doors who yet never 
open a book ; and other men who love books but to 
whom the great book of nature is a sealed volume, 
and the lines written therein blurred and illegible. 
Nevertheless among those men whom I have known the 
love of books and the love of outdoors, in their highest ex- 
pressions, have usually gone hand in hand. It is an affecta- 
tion for the man who is praising outdoors to sneer at books. 
Usually the keenest appreciation of what is seen in nature is 
to be found in those who have also profited by the hoarded 
and recorded wisdom of their fellow-men. Love of outdoor 
life, love of simple and hardy pastimes, can be gratified by 
men and women who do not possess large means, and who 
work hard; and so can love of good books — not of good 
bindings and of first editions, excellent enough in their way 
but sheer luxuries — I mean love of reading books, owning 
them if possible of course, but, if that is not possible, getting 
them from a circulating library. 

Sagamore Hill takes its name from the old Sagamore 
Mohannis, who, as chief of his little tribe, signed away his 
rights to the land two centuries and a half ago. The house 
stands right on the top of the hill, separated by fields and 
belts of woodland from all other houses, and looks out over 
the bay and the Sound. We see the sun go down beyond 
long reaches of land and of water. Many birds dwell in 
the trees round the house or in the pastures and the woods 
near by, and of course in winter gulls, loons, and wild fowl 
frequent the waters of the bay and the Sound. We love all 
the seasons ; the snows and bare woods of winter; the rush 
of growing things and the blossom-spray of spring ; the 

342 



OUTDOORS AND INDOORS 



343 



yellow grain, the ripening fruits and tasseled corn, and the 
deep, leafy shades that are heralded by "the green dance of 
summer"; and the sharp fall winds that tear the brilliant 
banners with which the trees greet the dying year. ^ 

The Sound is always lovely. In the summer nights we 
watch it from the piazza, and see the lights of the tall Fall 




Copyright by E. S. Curtis. 



Sagamore Hill. 



River boats as they steam steadily by. Now and then _we 
spend a day on it, the two of us together in the light rowing 
skiff, or perhaps with one of the boys to pull an extra pair 
of oars ; we land for lunch at noon under wind-beaten oaks 
on the edge of a low bluff, or among the wild plum bushes on 
a spit of white sand, while the sails of the coasting schooners 
gleam in the sunlight, and the tolling of the bell-buoy comes 
landward across the waters. 

Long Island is not as rich in flowers as the valley of the 
Hudson. Yet there are many. Early in April there is one 




Copyright by Gari Melchers. Reproduced from a "Thistle Print " copyright by 
The Detroit Publishing Company. From a painting by Gari Melchers. 



Theodore Roosevelt in Winter Riding Costume. 



OUTDOORS AND INDOORS 345 

hillside near us which glows like a tender flame with the white 
of the bloodroot. About the same time we find the shy may- 
flower, the trailing arbutus ; and although we rarely pick 
wild flowers, one member of the household always plucks a 
little bunch of mayflowers to send to a friend working in 
Panama, whose soul hungers for the Northern spring. Then 
there are shadblow and delicate anemones, about the time of 
the cherry blossoms ; the brief glory of the apple orchards 
follows ; and then the thronging dogwoods fill the forests 
with their radiance ; and so flowers follow flowers until the 
springtime splendor closes with the laurel and the evanescent, 
honey-sweet locust bloom. The late summer flowers follow, 
the flaunting lilies, and cardinal flowers, and marshmallows, 
and pale beach rosemary ; and the goldenrod and the asters 
when the afternoons shorten and we again begin to think of 
fires in the wide fireplaces. 

Most of the birds in our neighborhood are the ordinary 
home friends of the house and the barn, the wood lot and the 
pasture; but now and then the species make, queer shifts. 
The cheery quail, alas ! are rarely found near us now ; and 
we no longer hear the whip-poor-wills at night. But some 
birds visit us now which formerly did not. When I was a 
boy neither the black-throated green warbler nor the purple 
finch nested around us, nor were bobolinks found in our 
fields. The black-throated green warbler is now one of our 
commonest summer warblers ; there are plenty of purple 
finches ; and, best of all, the bobolinks are far from infre- 
quent. I had written about these new visitors to John 
Burroughs, and once when he came out to see me I was able 
to show them to him. 

When I was President, we owned a little house in western 
Mrginia ; a delightful house, to us at least, although only a 
shell of rough boards. We used sometimes to go there in 
the fall, perhaps at Thanksgiving, and on these occasions 
we would have quail and rabbits of our own shooting, and 
once in a while a wild turkey. We also went there in the 
spring. Of course many of the birds were different from 
our Long Island friends. There were mocking-birds, the 
most attractive of all birds, and blue grosbeaks, and cardi- 



346 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



nals and summer redbirds, instead of scarlet tanagers, and 
those wonderful singers the Bewick's wrens, and Carolina 
wrens. All these I was able to show John Burroughs when 
he came to visit us ; although, by the way, he did not appre- 
ciate as much as we did one set of inmates of the cottage — ■ 
the flying squirrels. We loved having the flying squirrels, 

father and mother and half- 
grown young, in their nest 
among the rafters ; and at 
night we slept so soundly 
that we did not in the least 
mind the wild gambols of 
the little fellows through the 
rooms, even when, as some- 
times happened, they would 
swoop down to the bed 
and scuttle across it. 

One April I went to Yel- 
lowstone Park, when the 
snow was still very deep, 
and I took John Burroughs 
with me. I wished to show 
him the big game of the 
Park, the wild creatures 
that have become so aston- 
ishingly tame and tolerant 
of human presence. In the 
Yellowstone the animals 
seem always to behave as 
one wishes them to ! It is always possible to see the 
sheep and deer and antelope, and also the great herds of 
elk, which are shyer than the smaller beasts. In April 
we found the elk weak after the short commons and hard 
Hving of winter. Once without much difficulty I regularly 
rounded up a big band of them, so that John Burroughs 
could look at them. I do not think, however, that he 
cared to see them as much as I did. The birds interested 
him more, especially a tiny owl the size of a robin which we 
saw perched on the top of a tree in mid-afternoon entirely 




Under the Porch at Sagamore. 



OUTDOORS AND INDOORS 347 

uninfluenced by the sun and making a queer noise like a cork 
being pulled from a bottle. I was rather ashamed to find 
how much better his eyes were than mine in seeing the birds 
and grasping their difi^erences. 

When wolf-hunting in Texas, and when bear-hunting in 
Louisiana and Mississippi, I was not only enthralled by the 
sport, but also by the strange new birds and other creatures, 
and the trees and flowers I had not known before. By the 
way, there was one feast at the White House which stands 
above all others in my memory — even above the time 
when I lured Joel Chandler Harris thither for a night, a 
deed in which to triumph, as all who knew that inveterately 
shy recluse will testify. This was "the bear-hunters' 
dinner." I had been treated so kindly by my friends on 
these hunts, and they were such fine fellows, men whom I 
was so proud to think of as Americans, that I set my heart 
on having them at a hunters' dinner at the White House. 
One December I succeeded ; there were twenty or thirty of 
them, all told, as good hunters, as daring riders, as first-class 
citizens as could be found anywhere ; no finer set of guests 
ever sat at meat in the White House ; and among other game 
on the table was a black bear, itself contributed by one of 
these same guests. 

When I first visited California, it was my good fortune to 
see the "big trees," the Sequoias, and then to travel down 
into the Yosemite, with John Muir. Of course of all people 
in the world he was the one with whom it was best worth 
while thus to see the Yosemite. He told me that when 
Emerson came to California he tried to get him to come out 
and camp with him, for that was the only way in which to 
see at their best the majesty and charm of the Sierras. But 
at the time Emerson was getting old and could not go. John 
Muir met me with a couple of packers and two mules to 
carry our tent, bedding, and food for a three days' trip. 
The first night was clear, and we lay down in the darkening 
aisles of the great Sequoia grove. The majestic trunks, 
beautiful in color and in symmetry, rose round us like the 
pillars of a mightier cathedral than ever was conceived even 
by the fervor of the Middle Ages. Hermit thrushes sang 



348 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

beautifully in the evening, and again, with a burst of won- 
derful music, at dawn. I was interested and a little sur- 
prised to find that, unlike John Burroughs, John Muir cared 




BtlORb: IHh iMuRNlNG RlDE AT SAGAMUKt. 



little for birds or bird songs, and knew little about them. 
The hermit thrushes meant nothing to him, the trees and the 
fiowers and the cliflFs everything. The only birds he noticed 



OUTDOORS AND INDOORS 349 

or cared for were some that were very conspicuous, such as 
the water-ousels — always particular favorites of mine too. 
The second night we camped in a snow-storm, on the edge 
of the caiion walls, under the spreading limbs of a grove of 
mighty silver fir; and next day we went down into the 
wonderland of the valley itself. I shall always be glad 
that I was in the Yosemite with John Muir and in the 
Yellowstone with John Burroughs. 

Like most Americans interested in birds and books, I 
know a good deal about English birds as they appear in 
books. I know the lark of Shakespeare and Shelley and the 
Ettrick Shepherd ; I know the nightingale of Milton and 
Keats; I know Wordsworth's cuckoo; I know mavis and 
merle singing in the merry green wood of the old ballads ; I 
know Jenny Wren and Cock Robin of the nursery books. 
Therefore I had always much desired to hear the birds in 
real life; and the opportunity offered in June, 1910, when I 
spent two or three weeks in England. As I could snatch but 
a few hours from a very exacting round of pleasures and 
duties, it was necessary for me to be with some companion 
who could identify both song and singer. In Sir Edward 
Grey, a keen lover of outdoor life in all its phases, and a 
delightful companion, who knows the songs and ways of 
English birds as very few do know them, I found the best 
possible guide. 

We left London on the morning of June 9, twenty-four 
hours before I sailed from Southampton. Getting off the 
train at Basingstoke, we drove to the pretty, smiling valley 
of the Itchen. Here we tramped for three or four hours, 
then again drove, this time to the edge of the New Forest, 
where we first took tea at an inn, and then tramped through 
the forest to an inn on its other side, at Brockenhurst. At 
the conclusion of our walk my companion made a list of the 
birds we had seen, putting an asterisk (*) opposite those 
which we had heard sing. There were forty-one of the 
former and twenty-three of the latter, as follows : 

* Thrush, * blackbird, * lark, * yellowhammer, * robin, 

* wren, * golden-crested wren, * goldfinch, * chaffinch, 

* greenfinch, pied wagtail, sparrow, * dunnock (hedge, ac- 



350 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

center), missel thrush, starling, rook, jackdaw, * blackcap, 

* garden warbler, * willow warbler, * chiffchaff, * wood 
warbler, tree-creeper, * reed bunting, * sedge warbler, coot, 
water hen, little grebe (dabchick), tufted duck, wood pigeon, 
stock dove, * turtle dove, peewit, tit ( ? coal tit), * cuckoo, 

* nightjar, * swallow, martin, swift, pheasant, partridge. 
The valley of the Itchen is typically the England that we 

know from novel and story and essay. It is very beautiful 
in every way, with a rich, civilized, fertile beauty — the 
rapid brook twisting among its reed beds, the rich green of 
trees and grass, the stately woods, the gardens and fields, 
the exceedingly picturesque cottages, the great handsome 
houses standing in their parks. Birds were plentiful ; I 
know but few places in America where one would see such an 
abundance of individuals, and I was struck by seeing such 
large birds as coots, water hens, grebes, tufted ducks, pig- 
eons, and peewits. In places in America as thickly settled 
as the valley of the Itchen, I should not expect to see any 
like number of birds of this size ; but I hope that the efforts 
of the Audubon societies and kindred organizations will 
gradually make themselves felt until it becomes a point of 
honor not only with the American man, but with the Amer- 
ican small boy, to shield and protect all forms of harmless 
wild life. True sportsmen should take the lead in such a 
movement, for if there is to be any shooting there must be 
something to shoot ; the prime necessity is to keep, and not 
kill out, even the birds which in legitimate numbers may be 
shot. 

The New Forest is a wild, uninhabited stretch of heath 
and woodland, many of the trees gnarled and aged, and its 
very wildness, the lack of cultivation, the ruggedness, made 
it strongly attractive in my eyes, and suggested my own 
country. The birds of course were much less plentiful than 
beside the Itchen. 

The bird that most impressed me on my walk was the 
blackbird. I had already heard nightingales in abundance 
near Lake Como, and had also listened to larks, but I had 
never heard either the blackbird, the song thrush, or the 
blackcap warbler ; and while I knew that all three were 



OUTDOORS AND INDOORS 351 

good singers, I did not know what really beautiful singers 
they were. Blackbirds were very abundant, and they 
played a prominent part in the chorus which we heard 
throughout the day on every hand, though perhaps loudest 
the following morning at dawn. In its habits and manners 
the blackbird strikingly resembles our American robin, and 
indeed looks exactly like a robin, with a yellow bill and coal- 
black plumage. It hops everywhere over the lawns, just 
as our robin does, and it lives and nests in the gardens in the 
same fashion. Its song has a general resemblance to that 
of our robin, but many of the notes are far more musical, 
more like those of our wood thrush. Indeed, there were 
individuals among those we heard certain of whose notes 
seemed to me almost to equal in point of melody the chimes 
of the wood thrush ; and the highest possible praise for any 
song-bird is to liken its song to that of the wood thrush or 
hermit thrush. I certainly do not think that the blackbird 
has received full justice in the books. I knew that he was a 
singer, but I really had no idea how fine a singer he was. 
I suppose one of his troubles has been his name, just as with 
our own catbird. When he appears in the ballads as the 
merle, bracketed with his cousin the mavis, the song thrush, 
it is far easier to recognize him as the master singer that he 
is. It is a fine thing for England to have such an asset of 
the countryside, a bird so common, so much in evidence, so 
fearless, and such a really beautiful singer. 

The thrush is a fine singer too, a better singer than our 
American robin, but to my mind not at the best quite as good 
as the blackbird at his best ; although often I found difficulty 
in telling the song of one from the song of the other, espe- 
cially if I only heard two or three notes. 

The larks were, of course, exceedingly attractive. It was 
fascinating to see them spring from the grass, circle upwards, 
steadily singing and soaring for several minutes, and then 
return to the point whence they had started. As my com- 
panion pointed out, they exactly fulfilled Wordsworth's 
description ; they soared but did not roam. It is quite 
impossible wholly to differentiate a bird's voice from its 
habits and surroundings. Although In the lark's song there 



352 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

are occasional musical notes, the song as a whole is not very- 
musical ; but it is so joyous, buoyant and unbroken, and 
uttered under such conditions as fully to entitle the bird to 
the place he occupies with both poet and prose writer. 

The most musical singer we heard was the blackcap 
warbler. To my ear its song seemed more musical than that 
of the nightingale. It was astonishingly powerful for so 
sm^all a bird ; in volume and continuity it does not come up 
to the songs of the thrushes and of certain other birds, but 
in quality, as an isolated bit of melody, it can hardly be 
surpassed. 

Among the minor singers the robin was noticeable. We 
all know this pretty little bird from the books, and I was 
prepared to find him as friendly and attractive as he proved 
to be, but I had not realized how well he sang. It is not a 
loud song, but very musical and attractive, and the bird is 
said to sing practically all through the year. The song of 
the wren interested me much, because it was not in the least 
like that of our house wren, but, on the contrary, like that of 
our winter wren. The theme is the same as the winter 
wren's, but the song did not seem to me to be as brilliantly 
musical as that of the tiny singer of the North Woods. The 
sedge warbler sang in the thick reeds a mocking ventriloquial 
lay, which reminded me at times of the less pronounced 
parts of our yellow-breasted chat's song. The cuckoo's cry 
was singularly attractive and musical, far more so than the 
rolling, many times repeated, note of our rain-crow. 

We did not reach the inn at Brockenhurst until about 
nine o'clock, just at nightfall, and a few minutes before that 
we heard a nightjar. It did not sound in the least like 
either our whip-poor-will or our night-hawk, uttering a long- 
continued call of one or two syllables, repeated over and 
over. The chaffinch was very much in evidence, contin- 
ually chaunting its unimportant little ditty. I was pleased 
to see the bold, masterful missel thrush, the stormcock as 
it is often called ; but this bird breeds and sings in the early 
spring, when the weather is still tempestuous, and had long 
been silent when we saw it. The starlings, rooks, and jack- 
daws did not sing, and their calls were attractive merely as 



OUTDOORS AND INDOORS 



353 



the calls of our grakles are attractive ; and the other birds 
that we heard sing, though they played their part in the 
general chorus, were performers of no especial note, like our 
tree-creepers, pine warblers, and chipping sparrows. The 
great spring chorus had already begun to subside, but the 
woods and fields were still vocal with beautiful bird music, 
the country was very lovely, the inn as comfortable as 
possible, and the bath and supper very enjoyable after our 




.1.' 



*. ^ ' •/•. '"' • ►^'^r.-'. 






pim 



P'rom the Summer House at Sagamore. 



tramp ; and altogether I passed no pleasanter twenty-four 
hours during my entire European trip. 

Ten days later, at Sagamore Hill, I was among my own 
birds, and was much interested as I listened to and looked 
at them in remembering the notes and actions of the birds 
I had seen in England. On the evening of the first day I sat 
in my rocking-chair on the broad veranda, looking across the 
Sound towards the glory of the sunset. The thickly grassed 
hillside sloped down in front of me to a belt of forest from 
which rose the golden, leisurely chiming of the wood thrushes, 
chanting their vespers ; through the still air came the warble 



354 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

of vireo and tanager ; and after nightfall we heard the flight 
song of an ovenbird from the same belt of timber. Over- 
head an oriole sang in the weeping elm, now and then break- 
ing his song to scold like an overgrown wren. Song-spar- 
rows and catbirds sang in the shrubbery; one robin had 
built its nest over the front and one over the back door, and 
there was a chippy's nest in the wistaria vine by the stoop. 
During the next twenty-four hours I saw and heard, either 
right around the house or while walking down to bathe, 
through the woods, the following forty-two birds : 

Little green heron, night heron, red-tailed hawk, yellow- 
billed cuckoo, kingfisher, flicker, humming-bird, swift, 
meadow-lark, red-winged blackbird, sharp-tailed finch, song 
sparrow, chipping sparrow, bush sparrow, purple finch, 
Baltimore oriole, cowbunting, robin, wood thrush, thrasher, 
catbird, scarlet tanager, red-eyed vireo, yellow warbler, 
black-throated green warbler, kingbird, wood peewee, crow, 
blue jay, cedar-bird, Maryland yellowthroat, chickadee, 
black and white creeper, barn swallow, white-breasted 
swallow, ovenbird, thistlefinch, vesperfinch, indigo bunting, 
towhee, grasshopper-sparrow, and screech owl. 

The birds were still in full song, for on Long Island there 
is little abatement in the chorus until about the second week 
of July, when the blossoming of the chestnut trees patches 
the woodland with frothy greenish-yellow.^ 

Our most beautiful singers are the wood thrushes ; they 
sing not only in the early morning but throughout the long 
hot June afternoons. Sometimes they sing in the trees im- 
mediately around the house, and if the air is still we can 
always hear them from among the tall trees at the foot of 
the hill. The thrashers sing in the hedgerows beyond the 
garden, the catbirds everywhere. The catbirds have such 
an attractive song that it Is extremely irritating to know that 
at any moment they may interrupt it to mew and squeal. 
The bold, cheery music of the robins always seems typical of 
the bold, cheery birds themselves. The Baltimore orioles 
nest in the young elms around the house, and the orchard 

^ Alas ! tjhe blight has now destroyed the chestnut trees, and robbed cur 
woods of one of their distinctive beauties. 



OUTDOORS AND INDOORS 355 

orioles In the apple trees near the garden and outbuildings. 
Among the earliest sounds of spring is the cheerful, simple, 
homely song of the song-sparrow ; and in March we also 
hear the piercing cadence of the meadow-lark — to us one 
of the most attractive of all bird calls. Of late years now 
and then we hear the rollicking, bubbling melody of the 
bobolink in the pastures back of the barn ; and when the full 
chorus of these and of many other of the singers of spring is 
dying down, there are some true hot-weather songsters, such 
as the brightly hued indigo buntings and thistlefinches. 
Among the finches one of the most musical and plaintive songs 
is that of the bush-sparrow — I do not know why the books 
call it field-sparrow, for it does not dwell in the open fields 
like the vesperfinch, the savannah-sparrow, and grasshopper- 
sparrow, but among the cedars and bayberry bushes and 
young locusts in the same places where the prairie warbler 
is found. Nor is it only the true songs that delight us. 
We love to hear the flickers call, and we readily pardon any 
one of their number which, as occasionally happens, is bold 
enough to wake us in the early morning by drumming on 
the shingles of the roof. In our ears the red-winged black- 
birds have a very attractive note. We love the screaming of 
the red-tailed hawks as they soar high overhead, and even 
the calls of the night heron that nest In the tall water maples 
by one of the wood ponds on our place, and the little green 
herons that nest beside the salt marsh. It is hard to tell just 
how much of the attraction in any bird-note lies In the music 
Itself and how much in the associations. This is what makes 
it so useless to try to compare the bird songs of one country 
with those of another. A man who is worth anything can 
no more be entirely Impartial in speaking of the bird songs 
with which from his earliest childhood he has been familiar 
than he can be entirely impartial In speakingof his own family. 
At Sagamore Hill we love a great many things — birds 
and trees and books, and all things beautiful, and horses and 
rifles and children and hard work and the joy of life. We 
have great fireplaces, and in them the logs roar and crackle 
during the long winter evenings. The big piazza is for the 
hot, still afternoons of summer. As In every house, there 
are things that appeal to the householder because of their 



356 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

associations, but which would not mean much to others. 
Naturally, any man who has been President, and filled other 
positions, accumulates such things, with scant regard to his 
own personal merits. Perhaps our most cherished posses- 
sions are a Remington bronze, "The Bronco Buster," given 
me by my men when the regiment was mustered out, and a 
big Tiffany silver vase given to Mrs. Roosevelt by the en- 
listed men of the battleship Louisiana after we returned 
from a cruise on her to Panama. It was a real surprise gift, 
presented to her in the White House, on behalf of the whole 
crew, by four as strapping man-of-war 's-men as ever swung 
a turret or pointed a twelve-inch gun. The enlisted men of 
the army I already knew well — of course I knew well the 
officers of both army and navy. But the enlisted men of 
the navy I only grew to know well when I was President. 
On the Louisiana Mrs. Roosevelt and I once dined at the 
chief petty officers' mess, and on another battleship, the 
Missouri (when I was in company with Admiral Evans and 
Captain Cowles), and again on the Sylph and on the May- 
flower, we also dined as guests of the crew. When we 
finished our trip on the Louisiana I made a short speech to 
the assembled crew, and at its close one of the petty officers, 
the very picture of what a man-of-war's-man should look 
like, proposed three cheers for me in terms that struck me 
as curiously illustrative of America at her best ; he said, 
"Now then, men, three cheers for Theodore Roosevelt, 
the typical American citizen !" That was the way in which 
they thought of the American President — and a very good 
way, too. It was an expression that would have come nat- 
urally only to men in whom the American principles of 
government and life were ingrained, just as they were 
ingrained in the men of my regiment. I need scarcely 
add, but I will add for the benefit of those who do not know, 
that this attitude of self-respecting identification of interest 
and purpose is not only compatible with but can only exist 
when there is fine and real discipline, as thorough and gen- 
uine as the discipline that has always obtained in the most 
formidable fighting fleets and armies. The discipline and 
the mutual respect are complementary, not antagonistic. 



OUTDOORS AND INDOORS 



357 



During the Presidency all of us, but especially the children, 
became close friends with many of the sailor men. The four 
bearers of the vase to Mrs. Roosevelt were promptly hailed 
as delightful big brothers by our two smallest boys, who at 
once took them to see the sights of Washington In the 
landau — "the President's land-ho !" as, with seafaring 
humor, our guests immediately styled it. Once, after we were 
In private life again, Mrs. 
Roosevelt was In a railway 
station and had some diffi- 
culty with her ticket. A fine- 
looking, quiet man stepped 
up and asked If he could 
be of help ; he remarked 
that he had been one of the 
Mayflower's crew, and knew 
us well ; and In answer to a 
question explained that he 
had left the navy In order 
to study dentistry, and 
added — a delicious touch — 
that while thus preparing 
himself to be a dentist he 
was earning the necessary 
money to go on with his 
studies by practicing the profession of a prize-fighter, being 
a good man In the ring. 

There are various bronzes In the house : Salnt-Gaudens's 
"Puritan," a token from my staff officers when I was Gov- 
ernor ; Proctor's cougar, the gift of the Tennis Cabinet — 
who also gave us a beautiful silver bowl, which is always 
lovingly pronounced to rhyme with "owl" because that was 
the pronunciation used at the time of the giving by the val- 
ued friend who acted as spokesman for his fellow-members, 
and who was himself the only non-American member of the 
said Cabinet. There is a horseman by Macmonnles, and a 
big bronze vase by Kemys, an adaptation or development 
of the pottery vases of the Southwestern Indians. Mixed 
with all of these are gifts from varied sources, ranging from 




Jack and his Master. 



358 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

a brazen Buddha sent me by the Dalai Lama and a wonder- 
ful psalter from the Emperor Menelik to a priceless ancient 
Samurai sword, coming from Japan in remembrance of the 
peace of Portsmouth, and a beautifully inlaid miniature 
suit of Japanese armor, given me by a favorite hero of mine. 
Admiral Togo, when he visited Sagamore Hill. There are 
things from European friends; a mosaic picture of Pope 
Leo XIII in his garden ; a huge, very handsome edition of the 
Nibelungenlied ; a striking miniature of John Hampden from 
Windsor Castle ; editions of Dante, and the campaigns 
of "Eugenio von Savoy" (another of my heroes, a dead hero 
this time) ; a Viking cup ; the state sword of a Uganda 
king; the gold box in which the "freedom of the city of 
London" was given me; a beautiful head of Abraham 
Lincoln given me by the French authorities after my speech 
at the Sorbonne ; and many other things from sources as 
diverse as the Sultan- of Turkey and the Dowager Empress 
of China. Then there are things from home friends : a 
Polar bear skin from Peary ; a Sioux buffalo robe with, on it, 
painted by some long-dead Sioux artist, the picture story 
of Custer's fight ; a bronze portrait plaque of Joel Chandler 
Harris ; the candlestick used in sealing the Treaty of Ports- 
mouth, sent me by Captain Cameron Winslow ; a shoe worn 
by Dan Patch when he paced a mile in 1.59, sent me by his 
owner. There is a picture of a bull moose by Carl Run- 
gius, which seems to me as spirited an animal painting as 
I have ever seen. In the north room, with its tables and 
mantelpiece and desks and chests made of woods sent from 
the Philippines by army friends, or by other friends for other 
reasons ; with its bison and wapiti heads ; there are three 
paintings by Marcus Symonds — "Where Light and Shadow 
Meet," "The Porcelain Towers," and "The Seats of the 
Mighty" ; he is dead now, and he had scant recognition 
while he lived, yet surely he was a great imaginative artist, 
a wonderful colorist, and a man with a vision more wonder- 
ful still. There is one of Lungren's pictures of the Western 
plains ; and a picture of the Grand Canyon ; and one by a 
Scandinavian artist who could see the fierce picturesqueness 
of workaday Pittsburgh ; and sketches of the White House 
by Sargent and by Hopkinson Smith. 



OUTDOORS AND INDOORS 



359 



The books are everywhere. There are as many in the 
north room and in the parlor — is drawing-room a more 
appropriate name than parlor ? — as in the library ; the gun- 
room at the top of the house, which incidentally has the 
loveliest view of all, contains more books than any of the 
other rooms ; and they are particularly delightful books to 




The North Room at Sagamore. 



browse among, just because they have not much relevance 
to one another, this being one of the reasons why they are 
relegated to their present abode. But the books have over- 
flowed into all the other rooms too. 

I could not name any principle upon which the books have 
been gathered. Books are almost as individual as friends. 
There is no earthly use in laying down general laws about 
them. Some meet the needs of one person, and some of 



36o THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

another ; and each person should beware of the booklover's 
besetting sin, of what Mr. Edgar Allan Poe calls "the mad 
pride of intellectuality," taking the shape of arrogant 
pity for the man who does not like the same kind of books. 
Of course there are books which a man or woman uses as 
instruments of a profession — law books, medical books, 
cookery books, and the like. I am not speaking of these, 
for they are not properly "books" at all; they come in the 
category of time-tables, telephone directories, and other 
useful agencies of civilized life. I am speaking of books that 
are meant to be read. Personally, granted that these books 
are decent and healthy, the one test to which I demand that 
they all submit is that of being interesting. If the book 
is not interesting to the reader, then in all but an infinitesimal 
number of cases it gives scant benefit to the reader. Of 
course any reader ought to cultivate his or her taste so that 
good books will appeal to it, and that trash won't. But 
after this point has once been reached, the needs of each 
reader must be met in a fashion that will appeal to those 
needs. Personally the books by which I have profited 
infinitely more than by any others have been those in which 
profit was a by-product of the pleasure ; that is, I read them 
because I enjoyed them, because I liked reading them, and 
the profit came in as part of the enjoyment. 

Of course each individual is apt to have some special tastes 
in which he cannot expect that any but a few friends will 
share. Now, I am very proud of my big-game library. I 
suppose there must be many big-game libraries in Conti- 
nental Europe, and possibly in England, more extensive 
than mine, but I have not happened to come across any 
such library in this country. Some of the originals go back 
to the sixteenth century, and there are copies or reproduc- 
tions of the two or three most famous hunting books of the 
Middle Ages, such as the Duke of York's translation of 
Gaston Phoebus, and the queer book of the Emperor Maximilr 
ian. It is only very occasionally that I meet any one who 
cares for any of these books. On the other hand, I expect to 
find many friends who will turn naturally to some of the 
old or the new books of poetry or romance or history to 



OUTDOORS AND INDOORS 361 

which we of the household habitually turn. Let me add 
that ours is in no sense a collector's library. Each book 
was procured because some one of the family wished to 
read it. We could never afford to take overmuch thought 
for the outsides of books ; we were too much interested in their 
insides. 

Now and then I am asked as to "what books a statesman 
should read," and my answer is, poetry and novels — 
including short stories under the head of novels. I don't 
mean that he should read only novels and modern poetry. 
If he cannot also enjoy the Hebrew prophets and the Greek 
dramatists, he should be sorry. He ought to read inter- 
esting books on history and government, and books of 
science and philosophy ; and really good books on these 
subjects are as enthralling as any fiction ever written in 
prose or verse. Gibbon and Macaulay, Herodotus, Thucyd- 
ides and Tacitus, the Heimskringla, Froissart, Joinville 
and Villehardouin, Parkman and Mahan, Mommsen and 
Ranke — why ! there are scores and scores of solid histories, 
the best in the world, which are as absorbing as the best of 
all the novels, and of as permanent value. The same thing 
is true of Darwin and Huxley and Carlyle and Emerson, and 
parts of Kant, and of volumes like Sutherland's " Growth of 
the Moral Instinct," or Acton's Essays and Lounsbury's 
studies — here again I am not trying to class books together, 
or measure one by another, or enumerate one in a thousand 
of those worth reading, but just to indicate that any man or 
woman of some intelligence and some cultivation can in 
some line or other of serious thought, scientific or historical 
or philosophical or economic or governmental, find any 
number of books which are charming to read, and which in 
addition give that for which his or her soul hungers. I do 
not for a minute mean that the statesman ought not to 
read a great many different books of this character, just as 
every one else should read them. But, in the final event, 
the statesman, and the publicist, and the reformer, and the 
agitator for new things, and the upholder of what is good in 
old things, all need more than anything else to know human 
nature, to know the needs of the human soul ; and they will 



362 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



find this nature and these needs set forth as nowhere else 
by the great imaginative writers, whether of prose or of 
poetry. 

The room for choice is so Hmitless that to my mind it 
seems absurd to try to make catalogues which shall be sup- 
posed to appeal to all the best thinkers. This is why I have 
no sympathy whatever with writing lists of the One Hundred 

Best Books, or the Five- 
Foot Library. It is all 
right for a man to amuse 
himself by composing a list 
of a hundred very good 
books ; and if he is to go 
off for a year or so where 
he cannot get many books, 
it is an excellent thing to 
choose a five-foot library' 
of particular books which 
in that particular year and 
on that particular trip he 
would like to read. But 
there is no such thing as a 
hundred books that are 
best for all men, or for the 
majority of men, or for one 
man at all times ; and 
there is no such thing as a 
five-foot library which will 
satisfy the needs of even 
one particular man on dif- 
ferent occasions extending over a number of years. Milton is 
best for one mood and Pope for another. Because a man 
likes Whitman or Browning or Lowell he should not feel 
himself debarred from Tennyson or Kipling or Korner or 
Heine or the Bard of the Dimbovitza. Tolstoy's novels 
are good at one time and those of Sienkiewicz at another ; 
and he is fortunate who can relish " Salammbo" and "Tom 
Brown " and the " Two Admirals " and " Quentin Durward " 
and "Artemus Ward" and the " Ingoldsby Legends" and 




The Mistress of Sagamore Hill. 



OUTDOORS AND INDOORS 363 

" Pickwick" and "Vanity Fair." Why, there are hundreds of 
books like these, each one of which, if really read, really 
assimilated, by the person to whom it happens to appeal, 
will enable that person quite unconsciously to furnish him- 
self with much ammunition which he will find of use in the 
battle of life. 

A book must be interesting to the particular reader at that 
particular time. But there are tens of thousands of inter- 
esting books, and some of them are sealed to some men and 
some are sealed to others ; and some stir the soul at some 
given point of a man's life and yet convey no message at other 
times. The reader, the booklover, must meet his own needs 
without paying too much attention to what his neighbors 
say those needs should be. He must not hypocritically 
pretend to like what he does not like. Yet at the same time 
he must avoid that most unpleasant of all the indications of 
puflFed-up vanity which consists in treating mere individual, 
and perhaps unfortunate, idiosyncrasy as a matter of pride. 
I happen to be devoted to Alacbeth, whereas I very seldom 
read Hamlet (though I like parts of it). Now I am humbly 
and sincerely conscious that this is a demerit in me and not 
in Hamlet; and yet it would not do me any good to pretend 
that I like Hamlet as much as Macbeth when, as a matter of 
fact, I don't. I am very fond of simple epics and of ballad 
poetry, from the Nibelungenlied and the Roland song 
through "Chevy Chase" and "Patrick Spens" and "Twa 
Corbies" to Scott's poems and Longfellow's "Saga of King 
Olaf " and " Othere." On the other hand, I don't care to read 
dramas as a rule ; I cannot read them with enjoyment unless 
they appeal to me very strongly. They must almost be 
^schylus or Euripides, Goethe or Moliere, in order that I 
may not feel after finishing them a sense of virtuous pride 
in having achieved a task. Now I would be the first to 
deny that even the most delightful old English ballad should 
be put on a par with any one of scores of dramatic works 
by authors whom I have not mentioned ; I know that each 
of these dramatists has written what is of more worth than 
the ballad ; only, I enjoy the ballad, and I don't enjoy the 
drama; and therefore the ballad is better for me, and this 



364 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

fact is not altered by the other fact that my own short- 
comings are to blame in the matter. I still read a number of 
Scott's novels over and over again, whereas if I finish any- 
thing by Miss Austen I have a feeling that duty performed 
is a rainbow to the soul. But other booklovers who are very 
close kin to me, and whose taste I know to be better than 
mine, read Miss Austen all the time — and, moreover, they 
are very kind, and never pity me in too offensive a manner 
for not reading her myself. 

Aside from the masters of literature, there are all kinds of 
books which one person will find delightful, and which he 
certainly ought not to surrender just because nobody else is 
able to find as much in the beloved volume. There is on 
our book-shelves a little pre-Victorian novel or tale called 
" The Semi-Attached Couple." It is told with much humor ; 
it is a story of gentlefolk who are really gentlefolk ; and to me 
it is altogether delightful. But outside the members of my 
own family I have never met a human being who had even 
heard of it, and I don't suppose I ever shall meet one. I 
often enjoy a story by some living author so much that I 
write to tell him so — or to tell her so ; and at least half the time 
I regret my action, because it encourages the writer to believe 
that the public shares my views, and he then finds that the 
public doesn't. 

Books are all very well in their way, and we love thern at 
Sagamore Hill ; but children are better than books. Saga- 
more Hill is one of three neighboring houses in which small 
cousins spent very happy years of childhood. In the three 
houses there were at one time sixteen of these small cousins, 
all told, and once we ranged them in order of size and took 
their photograph. There are many kinds of success in life 
worth having. It is exceedingly interesting and attractive 
to be a successful business man, or railroad man, or farmer, 
or a successful lawyer or doctor ; or a writer, or a President, 
or a ranchman, or the colonel of a fighting regiment, or to 
kill grizzly bears and lions. But for unflagging interest 
and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reason- 
ably well, certainly makes all other forms of success and 
achievement lose their importance by comparison. It 



OUTDOORS AND INDOORS 



365 



may be true that he travels farthest who travels alone ; 
but the goal thus reached Is not worth reaching. And as for 
a life deliberately devoted to pleasure as an end — why, the 
greatest happiness is the happiness that comes as a by- 
product of striving to do what must be done, even though 
sorrow is met in the doing. There is a bit of homely phi- 
losophy, quoted by Squire Bill Widener, of Widener's Val- 
ley, Virginia, which sums up one's duty In life: "Do what 
you can, with what you've got, where you are." 




The Sixteen Cousins. 



The country is the place for children, and if not the 
country, a city small enough so that one can get out into the 
country. When our. own children were little, we were for 
several winters in Washington, and each Sunday afternoon 
the whole family spent in Rock Creek Park, which was then 
very real country indeed. I would drag one of the children's 
wagons ; and when the very smallest pairs of feet grew tired 
of trudging bravely after us, or of racing on rapturous side 
trips after flowers and other treasures, the owners would 
clamber Into the wagon. One of these wagons, by the way, 
a gorgeous red one, had "Express" painted on it in gilt 
letters, and was known to the younger children as the 
'"spress" wagon. They evidently associated the color 



366 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

with the term. Once while we were at Sagamore something 
happened to the cherished '"spress" wagon to the distress 
of the children, and especially of the child who owned it. 
Their mother and I were just starting for a drive in the 
buggy, and we promised the bereaved owner that we would 
visit a store we knew in East Norwich, a village a few miles 
away, and bring back another '"spress" wagon. When 
we reached the store, we found to our dismay that the 
wagon which we had seen had been sold. We could not 
bear to return without the promised gift, for we knew that 
the brains of small persons are much puzzled when their 
elders seem to break promises. Fortunately, we saw in the 
store a delightful little bright-red chair and bright-red table, 
and these we brought home and handed solemnly over to 
the expectant recipient, explaining that as there unfor- 
tunately was not a '"spress" wagon we had brought him back 
a '"spress" chair and '"spress" table. It worked beauti- 
fully! The '"spress" chair and table were received with 
such rapture that we had to get duplicates for the other 
small member of the family who was the particular crony 
of the proprietor of the new treasures. 

When their mother and I returned from a row, we would 
often see the children waiting for us, running like sand- 
spiders along the beach. They always liked to swim in 
company with a grown-up of buoyant temperament and 
inventive mind, and the float oflFered limitless opportunities 
for enjoyment while bathing. All dutiful parents know the 
game of "stage-coach"; each child is given a name, such as 
the whip, the nigh leader, the oflF wheeler, the old lady pas- 
senger, and, under penalty of paying a forfeit, must get 
up and turn round when the grown-up, who is improvising 
a thrilling story, mentions that particular object; and when 
the word "stage-coach" is mentioned, everybody has to get 
up and turn round. Well, we used to play stage-coach 
on the float while in swimming, and instead of tamely get- 
ting up and turning round, the child whose turn it was had 
to plunge overboard. When I mentioned "stage-coach," 
the water fairly foamed with vigorously kicking little legs ; 
and then there was always a moment of interest while I 



OUTDOORS AND INDOORS 



367 



counted, so as to be sure that the number of heads that came 
up corresponded with the number of children who had gone 
down. 

No man or woman will ever forget the time when some 
child lies sick of a disease that threatens its life. Moreover, 
much less serious sickness is unpleasant enough at the time. 
Looking back, however, there are elements of comedy in 
certain of the less serious cases. I well remember one such 
instance which occurred when we were living in Washington, 
in a small house, with barely 




enough room for everybody 
when all the chinks were 
filled. Measles descended 
on the household. In the 
effort to keep the children 
that were well and those 
that were sick apart, their 
mother and I had to camp 
out in improvised fashion. 
When the eldest small boy 
was getting well, and had 
recovered his spirits, I slept 
on a sofa beside his bed — 
the sofa being so short that 
my feet projected over any- 
how. One afternoon the 
small boy was given a toy 
organ by a sympathetic friend. Next morning early I 
was waked to find the small boy very vivacious and re- 
questing a story. Having drowsily told the story, I 
said, "Now, father's told you a story, so you amuse your- 
self and let father go to sleep"; to which the small boy 
responded most virtuously, "Yes, father will go to sleep 
and I'll play the organ," which he did, at a distance of two 
feet from my head. Later his sister, who had just come 
down with the measles, was put into the same room. The 
small boy was convalescing, and was engaged in playing on 
the floor with some tin ships, together with two or three 
pasteboard monitors and rams of my own manufacture. 



Copyright by E. S. Curtis. 

Bubbles. 



368 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

He was giving a vivid rendering of Farragut at Mobile 
Bay, from memories of how I had told the story. My 
pasteboard rams and monitors were fascinating — if a 
naval architect may be allowed to praise his own work — • 
and as property they were equally divided between the 
little girl and the small boy. The little girl looked on with 
alert suspicion from the bed, for she was not yet convales- 
cent enough to be allowed down on the floor. The small 
boy was busily reciting the phases of the fight, which now 
approached its climax, and the little girl evidently suspected 
that her monitor was destined to play the part of victim. 
Little boy. "And then they steamed bang into the 
monitor." 

Little girl. "Brother, don't you sink my monitor !" 
Little hoy (without heeding, and hurrying toward the 
climax). "And the torpedo went at the monitor!" 
Little girl. "My monitor is not to sink !" 
Little boy, dramatically: "And bang the monitor sank !" 
Little girl. "It didn't do any such thing. My monitor 
always goes to bed at seven, and it's now quarter past. 
My monitor was in bed and couldn't sink !" 

When I was Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Leonard 
Wood and I used often to combine forces and take both 
families of children out to walk, and occasionally some of 
their playmates. Leonard Wood's son, I found, attributed 
the paternity of all of those not of his own family to me. 
Once we were taking the children across Rock Creek on a 
fallen tree. I was standing on the middle of the log trying 
to prevent any of the children from falling off, and while 
making a clutch at one peculiarly active and heedless child 
I fell off myself. As I emerged from the water I heard the 
little Wood boy calling frantically to the General: "Oh ! 
oh ! The father of all the children fell into the creek !" — • 
which made me feel like an uncommonly moist patriarch. 
Of course the children took much interest in the trophies 
I occasionally brought back from my hunts. When I 
started for my regiment, in '98, the stress of leaving home, 
which was naturally not pleasant, was somewhat lightened 
by the next to the youngest boy, whose ideas of what was 



OUTDOORS AND INDOORS 



369 



about to happen were hazy, clasping me round the legs 
with a beaming smile and saying, "And is my father going 
to the war ? And will he bring me back a bear ?" When, 
some five months later, I returned, of course in my uniform, 
this little boy was much puzzled as to my identity, although 
he greeted me afTably with "Good afternoon, Colonel." 
Half an hour later some- 



body asked him, "Where's 
father ?" to which he re- 
sponded, "I don't know; 
but the Colonel is taking 
a bath." 

Of course the children an- 
thropomorphized — if that 
is the proper term — their 
friends of the animal world. 
Among these friends at one 
period was the baker's 
horse, and on a very rainy 
day I heard the little girl, 
who was looking out of the 
window, say, with a melan- 
choly shake of her head, 
"Oh ! there's poor Kraft's 
horse, all soppin' wet !" 

While I was in the White 
House the youngest boy be- 
came an habitue of a small 
and rather noisome animal 

shop, and the good-natured owner would occasionally let him 
take pets home to play with. On one occasion I was holding 
a conversation with one of the leaders in Congress, Uncle 
Pete Hepburn, about the Railroad Rate Bill. The chil- 
dren were strictly trained not to interrupt business, but on 
this particular occasion the little boy's feelings overcame 
him. He had been loaned a king-snake, which, as all nature- 
lovers know, is not only a useful but a beautiful snake, 
very friendly to human beings ; and he came rushing home 
to show the treasure. He was holding it inside his coat, 




Copyriglu by E. S. Curtis. 
Daisies. 



370 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

and it contrived to wiggle partly down the sleeve. Uncle 
Pete Hepburn naturally did not understand the full import 
of what the little boy was saying to me as he endeavored 
to wriggle out of his jacket, and kindly started to help him 

— and then jumped back with alacrity as the small boy 
and the snake both popped out of the jacket. 

There could be no healthier and pleasanter place in which 
lo bring up children than in that nook of old-time America 
around Sagamore Hill. Certainly I never knew small 
people to have a better time or a better training for their 
work in after life than the three families of cousins at Saga- 
more Hill. It was real country, and — speaking from the 
somewhat detached point of view of the masculine parent 

— I should say there was just the proper mixture of free- 
dom and control in the management of the children. They 
were never allowed to be disobedient or to shirk lessons or 
work ; and they were encouraged to have all the fun possible. 
They often went barefoot, especially during the many hours 
passed in various enthralling pursuits along and in the waters 
of the bay. They swam, they tramped, they boated, they 
coasted and skated in winter, they were intimate friends 
with the cows, chickens, pigs, and other live stock. They 
had in succession two ponies. General Grant and, when the 
General's legs became such that he lay down too often and 
too unexpectedly in the road, a calico pony named Algon- 
quin, who is still living a life of honorable leisure in the 
stable and in the pasture — where he has to be picketed, 
because otherwise he chases the cows. Sedate pony Grant 
used to draw the cart in which the children went driving 
when they were very small, the driver being their old nurse 
Mame, who had held their mother in her arms when she 
was born, and who was knit to them by a tie as close as any 
tie of blood. I doubt whether I ever saw Mame really 
offended with them except once when, out of pure but mis- 
understood affection, they named a pig after her. They 
loved pony Grant. Once I saw the then little boy of three 
hugging pony Grant's fore legs. As he leaned over, his 
broad straw hat tilted on end, and pony Grant meditatively 
munched the brim ; whereupon the small boy looked up 



OUTDOORS AND INDOORS 



371 



with a wail of anguish, evidently thinking the pony had 
decided to treat him like a radish. 

The children had pets of their own, too, of course. Among 
them guinea pigs were the stand-bys — their highly unemo- 
tional nature fits them for companionship with adoring but 
over-enthusiastic young masters and mistresses. Then 
there were flying squirrels, and kangaroo rats, gentle and 
trustful, and a badger whose temper was short but whose 
nature was fundamentally friendly. The badger's name was 
Josiah ; the particular little 



boy whose property he was 
used to carry him about, 
clasped firmly around what 
would have been his waist 
if he had had any. Inas- 
much as when on the ground 
the badger would play en- 
ergetic games of tag with 
the little boy and nip his 
bare legs, I suggested that 
it would be uncommonly 
disagreeable if he took ad- 
vantage of being held in the 
little boy's arms to bite his 
face ; but this suggestion was 
repelled with scorn as an 
unworthy assault on the 
character of Josiah. "He 
bites legs sometimes, but he never bites faces," said 
the little boy. We also had a young black bear whom 
the children christened Jonathan Edwards, partly out 
of compliment to their mother, who was descended from 
that great Puritan divine, and partly because the bear 
possessed a temper in which gloom and strength were 
combined in what the children regarded as Calvinistic 
proportions. As for the dogs, of course there were many, 
and during their lives they were intimate and valued family 
friends, and their deaths were household tragedies. One 
of them, a large yellow animal of several good breeds and 




Josiah and his Master. 



372 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

valuable rather because of psychical than physical traits, 
was named "Susan" by his small owners, in commemoration 
of another retainer, a white cow ; the fact that the cow and 
the dog were not of the same sex being treated with indif- 
ference. Much the most individual of the dogs and the one 
with the strongest character was Sailor Boy, a Chesapeake 
Bay dog. He had a masterful temper and a strong sense of 
both dignity and duty. He would never let the other dogs 
fight, and he himself never fought unless circumstances 
imperatively demanded it; but he was a murderous animal 
when he did fight. He was not only exceedingly fond of the 
water, as was to be expected, but passionately devoted to 
gunpowder in every form, for he loved firearms and fairly 
reveled in the Fourth of July celebrations — the latter 
being rather hazardous occasions, as the children strongly 
objected to any "safe and sane" element being injected into 
them, and had the normal number of close shaves with 
rockets, Roman candles, and firecrackers. 

One of the stand-bys for enjoyment, especially in rainy 
weather, was the old barn. This had been built nearly a 
century previously, and was as delightful as only the pleas- 
antest kind of old barn can be. It stood at the meeting- 
spot of three fences. A favorite amusement used to be an 
obstacle race when the barn was full of hay. The con- 
testants were timed and were started successively from out- 
side the door. They rushed inside, clambered over or bur- 
rowed through the hay, as suited them best, dropped out of 
a place where a loose board had come off, got over, through, 
or under the three fences, and raced back to the starting- 
point. When they were little, their respective fathers were 
expected also to take part in the obstacle race, and when 
with the advance of years the fathers finally refused to be 
contestants, there was a general feeling of pained regret 
among the children at such a decline in the sporting spirit. 

Another famous place for handicap races was Cooper's 
Bluff, a gigantic sand-bank rising from the edge of the bay, 
a mile from the house. If the tide was high there was an 
added thrill, for some of the contestants were sure to run 
into the water. 



OUTDOORS AND INDOORS 



373 



As soon as the little boys learned to swim they were allowed 
to go off by themselves in rowboats and camp out for the 
night along the Sound. Sometimes I would go along so 
as to take the smaller children. Once a schooner was 
wrecked on a point half a dozen miles away. She held 
together well for a season or two after having been cleared 
of everything down to the timbers, and this gave us the 




The Obstacle Race around the Old Barn. 



chance to make camping-out trips in which the girls could 
also be included, for we put them to sleep in the wreck, 
while the boys slept on the shore ; squaw picnics, the chil- 
dren called them. 

My children, when young, went to the public school near 
us, the little Cove School, as it is called. For nearly thirty 
years we have given the Christmas tree to the school. 
Before the gifts are distributed I am expected to make an 
address, which is always mercifully short, my own children 
having impressed upon me with frank sincerity the attitude 



374 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



of other children to addresses of this kind on such occasions. 
There are of course performances by the children them- 
selves, while all of us parents look admiringly on, each 
sympathizing with his or her particular offspring in the 
somewhat wooden recital of "Darius Green and his Flying 
Machine" or "The Mountain and the Squirrel had a Quar- 
rel." But the tree and the 
gifts make up for all short- 
comings. 

We had a sleigh for win- 
ter ; but if, when there was 
much snow, the whole fam- 
ily desired to go somewhere, 
we would put the body of 
the farm wagon on runners 
and all bundle in together. 
We always liked snow at 
Christmas time, and the 
sleigh-ride down to the 
church on Christmas eve. 
One of the hymns always 
sung at this Christmas eve 
festival begins, "It's Christ- 
mas eve on the river, it's 
Christmas eve on the bay." 
All good natives of the vil- 
lage firmly believe that this 
hymn was written here, and 
with direct reference to 
Oyster Bay ; although if such were the case the word 
"river" would have to be taken in a hyperbolic sense, as 
the nearest approach to a river is the village pond. I 
used to share this belief myself, until my faith was shaken 
by a Denver lady who wrote that she had sung that hymn 
when a child in Michigan, and that at the present time her 
little Denver babies also loved it, although in their case the 
river was not represented by even a village pond. 

When we were in Washington, the children usually went 
with their mother to the Episcopal church, while I went to 




The Small Boy of the White House. 



OUTDOORS AND INDOORS 375 

the Dutch Reformed. But if any child misbehaved itself, 
it was sometimes sent next Sunday to church with me, on 
the theory that my companionship would have a sedative 
effect — which it did, as I and the child walked along with 
rather constrained politeness, each eying the other with 
watchful readiness for the unexpected. On one occasion, 
when the child's conduct fell just short of warranting such 
extreme measures, his mother, as they were on the point 
of entering church, concluded a homily by a quotation which 
showed a certain haziness of memory concerning the mar- 
riage and baptismal services: "No, little boy, if this con- 
duct continues, I shall think that you neither love, honor, nor 
obey me !" However, the culprit was much impressed with 
a sense of shortcoming as to the obligations he had under- 
taken ; so the result was as satisfactory as if the quotation 
had been from the right service. 

As for the education of the children, there was of course 
much of it that represented downright hard work and drudg- 
ery. There was also much training that came as a by-prod- 
uct and was perhaps almost as valuable — not as a sub- 
stitute but as an addition. After their supper, the children, 
when little, would come trotting up to their mother's room 
to be read to, and it was always a surprise to me to notice 
the extremely varied reading which interested them, from 
Howard Pyle's "Robin Hood," Mary Alicia Owen's "Voodoo 
Tales, "and Joel Chandler Harris's "Aaron in the Wild Woods," 
to "Lycidas" and "King John." If their mother was absent, 
I would try to act as vice-mother — a poor substitute, I 
fear — superintending the supper and reading aloud after- 
wards. The children did not wish me to read the books 
they desired their mother to read, and I usually took some 
such book as "Hereward the Wake," or "Guy Mannering," or 
"The Last of the Mohicans" or else some story about a man- 
eating tiger, or a man-eating lion, from one of the hunting 
books in my library. These latter stories were always fa- 
vorites, and as the authors told them in the first person, my 
interested auditors grew to know them by the name of the 
"I" stories, and regarded them as adventures all of which 
happened to the same individual. When Selous, the Afri- 



376 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

can hunter, visited us, I had to get him to tell to the younger 
children two or three of the stories with which they were 
already familiar from my reading; and as Selous is a most 
graphic narrator, and always enters thoroughly into the 
feeling not only of himself but of the opposing lion or buffalo, 
my own rendering of the incidents was cast entirely into the 
shade. 

Besides profiting by the more canonical books on educa- 
tion, we profited by certain essays and articles of a less 
orthodox type. I wish to express my warmest gratitude for 
such books — not of avowedly didactic purpose — as 
Laura Richards's books, Josephine Dodge Daskam's "Mad- 
ness of Philip," Palmer Cox's " Queer People," the melodies 
of Father Goose and Mother Wild Goose, Flandreau's "Mrs. 
White's," Myra Kelly's stories of her little East Side pupils, 
and Michelson's "Madigans." It is well to take duties, and 
life generally, seriously. It is also well to remember that a 
sense of humor is a healthy anti-scorbutic to that portentous 
seriousness which defeats its own purpose. 

Occasionally bits of self-education proved of unexpected 
help to the children in later years. Like other children, they 
were apt to take to bed with them treasures which they par- 
ticularly esteemed. One of the boys, just before his sixteenth 
birthday, went moose hunting with the family doctor, and 
close personal friend of the entire family, Alexander Lambert. 
Once night overtook them before they camped, and they had 
to lie down just where they were. Next morning Dr. Lam- 
bert rather enviously congratulated the boy on the fact that 
stones and roots evidently did not interfere with the sound- 
ness of his sleep; to which the boy responded, " Well, Doc- 
tor, you see it isn't very long since I used to take fourteen 
china animals to bed with me every night ! " 

As the children grew up. Sagamore Hill remained delight- 
ful for them. There were picnics and riding parties, there 
were dances in the north room — sometimes fancy dress 
dances — and open-air plays on the green tennis court of 
one of the cousin's houses. The children are no longer 
children now. Most of them are men and women, working 
out their own fates in the big world ; some in our own land, 



OUTDOORS AND INDOORS 



377 



others across the great oceans or where the Southern Cross 
blazes in the tropic nights. Some of them have children 
of their own ; some are working at one thing, some at another ; 
in cable ships, in business offices, in factories, in newspaper 
offices, building steel 
bridges, bossing 
gravel trains and 
steam shovels, or lay- 
ing tracks and super- 
in tending freight 
traffic. They have 
had their share of ac- 
cidents and escapes ; 
as I write, word 
comes from a far-off 
land that one of 
them, whom Seth 
Bullock used to call 
" Kim " because he 
was the friend of all 
mankind, while boss- 
ing a dangerous but 
necessary steel struc- 
tural job has had two 
ribs and two back 
teeth broken, and is 
back at work. They 
have known and they 
will know joy and 
sorrow, triumph and 
temporary defeat. 
But I believe they are all the better off because of their 
happy and healthy childhood. 

It is impossible to win the great prizes of life without 
running risks, and the greatest of all prizes are those con- 
nected with the home. No father and mother can hope to 
escape sorrow and anxiety, and there are dreadful moments 
when death comes very near those we love, even if for the 
time being it passes by. But life is a great adventure, and 




The First Grandchild at Sagamore Hill. 



378 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

the worst of all fears is the fear of living. There are man^ 
forms of success, many forms of triumph. But there is no 
other success that in any shape or way approaches that which 
is open to most of the many, many men and women who have 
the right ideals. These are the men and the women who 
see that it is the intimate and homely things that count 
most. They are the men and women who have the courage 
to strive for the happiness which comes only with labor and 
effort and self-sacrifice, and only to those whose joy in life 
springs in part from power of work and sense of duty. 



CHAPTER X 

THE presidency; making an old party progressive 

ON September 6, 1901, President McKInley was 
shot by an Anarchist in the city of Buffalo. I 
went to Buffalo at once. The President's condition 
seemed to be improving, and after a day or two 
we were told that he was practically out of danger. I 
then joined my family, who were in the Adirondacks, near 
the foot of Mount Tahawus. A day or two afterwards 
we took a long tramp through the forest, and in the after- 
noon I climbed Mount Tahawus. After reaching the top 
I had descended a few hundred feet to a shelf of land where 
there was a little lake, when I saw a guide coming out of 
the woods on our trail from below. I felt at once that he 
had bad news, and, sure enough, he handed me a telegram 
saying that the President's condition was much worse and 
that I must come to Buffalo immediately. It was late in 
the afternoon, and darkness had fallen by the time I reached 
the clubhouse where we were staying. It was some time 
afterwards before I could get a wagon to drive me out to the 
nearest railway station. North Creek, some forty or fifty 
miles distant. The roads were the ordinary wilderness 
roads and the night was dark. But we changed horses two or 
three times — when I say "we" I mean the driver and I, as 
there was no one else with us — and reached the station just 
at dawn, to learn from Mr. Loeb, who had a special train 
waiting, that the President was dead. That evening I took 
the oath of office, in the house of Ansley Wilcox, at Buffalo. 
On three previous occasions the Vice-President had suc- 
ceeded to the Presidency on the death of the President. 
In each case there had been a reversal of party policy, 
and a nearly immediate and nearly complete change in the 
personnel of the higher offices, especially the Cabinet. I 

379 




From a painting by John S. Sargent. Photograph by Frances B. Johnson. 
President Roosevelt. 
This portrait of Theodore Roosevelt, by John S. Sargent, is at the White House, 



THE PRESIDENCY 381 

had never felt that this was wise from any standpouit. 
If a man is fit to be President, he will speedily so impress 
himself in the office that the policies pursued will be his any- 
how, and he will not have to bother as to whether he is 
changing them or not ; while as regards the offices under 
him, the important thing for him is that his subordinates 
shall make a success in handling their several departments. 
The subordinate is sure to desire to make a success of his 
department for his own sake, and if he is a fit man, whose 
views on public policy are sound, and whose abilities entitle 
him to his position, he will do excellently under almost any 
chief with the same purposes. 

I at once announced that I would continue unchanged 
McKinley's policies for the honor and prosperity of the 
country, and I asked all the members of the Cabinet to stay. 
There were no changes made among them save as changes 
were made among their successors whom I myself appointed. 
I continued Mr. McKinley's policies, changing and develop- 
ing them and adding new policies only as the questions 
before the public changed and as the needs of the public 
developed. Some of my friends shook their heads over this, 
telling me that the men I retained would not be "loyal to 
me," and that I would seem as if I were "a pale copy of 
McKinley." I told them that I was not nervous on this 
score, and that if the men I retained were loyal to their 
work they would be giving me the loyalty for which I most 
cared ; and that if they were not, I would change them any- 
how ; and that as for being "a pale copy of McKinley," 
I was not primarily concerned with either following or not 
following in his footsteps, but in facing the new problems 
that arose ; and that If I were competent I would find ample 
opportunity to show my competence by my deeds without 
worrying myself as to how to convince people of the fact. 

For the reasons I have already given in my chapter on the 
Governorship of New York, the Republican party, which in 
the days of Abraham Lincoln was founded as the radical 
progressive party of the Nation, had been obliged during the 
last decade of the nineteenth century to uphold the interests 
of popular government against a foolish and illjudged mock- 



382 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

radicalism. It remained the Nationalist as against the par- 
tlcularlst or State's rights party, and In so far it remained 
absolutely sound ; for little permanent good can be done by 
any party which worships the State's rights fetish or which 
fails to regard the State, like the county or the municipality, 
as merely a convenient unit for local self-government, while 
in all National matters, of importance to the whole people, 
the Nation is to be supreme over State, county, and town 
alike. But the State's rights fetish, although still effect- 
ively used at certain times by both courts and Congress 
to block needed National legislation directed against the 
huge corporations or in the interests of workingmen, was not 
a prime issue at the time of which I speak. In 1896, 1898, 
and 1900 the campaigns were waged on two great moral 
issues : (i) the imperative need of a sound and honest 
currency; (2) the need, after 1898, of meeting in manful 
and straightforward fashion the extraterritorial problems 
arising from the Spanish War. On these great moral issues 
the Republican party was right, and the men who were 
opposed to It, and who claimed to be the radicals, and their 
allies among the sentimentalists, were utterly and hopelessly 
wrong. This had, regrettably but perhaps inevitably, 
tended to throw the party into the hands not merely of the 
conservatives but or the reactionaries; of men who, some- 
times for personal and Improper reasons, but more often with 
entire sincerity and uprightness of purpose, distrusted any- 
thing that was progressive and dreaded radicalism. These 
men still from force of habit applauded what Lincoln had 
done In the way of radical dealing with the abuses of his day ; 
but they did not apply the spirit In which Lincoln worked 
to the abuses of their own day. Both houses of Congress 
were controlled by these men. Their leaders in the Senate 
were Messrs. Aldrlch and Hale. The Speaker of the House 
when I became President was Mr. Henderson, but in a little 
over a year he was succeeded by Mr. Cannon, who, although 
widely differing from Senator Aldrlch In matters of detail, 
represented the same type of public sentiment. There were 
many points on which I agreed with Mr. Cannon and Mr, 
Aldrlch, and some points on which I agreed with Mr. Hale. 



THE PRESIDENCY 383 

I made a resolute effort to get on with all three and with 
their followers, and I have no question that they made an 
equally resolute effort to get on with me. We succeeded 
in working together, although with increasing friction, 
for "some years, I pushing forward and they hanging back. 
Gradually, however, I was forced to abandon the effort to 
persuade them to come my way, and then I achieved results 
only by appealing over the heads of the Senate and House 
leaders to the people, who were the masters of both of us. 
I continued in this way to get results until almost the close 
of my term ; and the Republican party became once more 
the progressive and indeed the fairly radical progressive 
party of the Nation. When my successor was chosen, how- 
ever, the leaders of the House and Senate, or most of them, 
felt that it was safe to come to a break with me, and the 
last or short session of Congress, held between the election 
of my successor and his inauguration four months later, saw 
a series of contests between the majorities in the two houses 
of Congress and the President, — myself, — quite as bitter as if 
they and I had belonged to opposite political parties. How- 
ever, I held my own. I was not able to push through the 
legislation I desired during these four months, but I was able 
to prevent them doing anything I did not desire, or undoing 
anything that I had already succeeded in getting done. 

There were, of course, many Senators and members of the 
lower house with whom up to the very last I continued to 
work in hearty accord, and with a growing understanding. 
I have not the space to enumerate, as I would like to, these 
men. For many years Senator Lodge had been my close 
personal and political friend, with whom I discussed all public 
questions, that arose, usually with agreement; and our 
intimately close relations were of course unchanged by my 
entry into the White House. He was of all our public men 
the man who had made the closest and wisest study of our 
foreign relations, and more clearly than almost any other 
man he understood the vital fact that the efficiency^ of 
our navy conditioned our national efficiency in foreign affairs. 
Anything relating to our international relations, from 
Panama and the navy to the Alaskan boundary question. 



384 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

the Algeciras negotiations, or the peace of Portsmouth, I 
was certain to discuss with Senator Lodge and also with 
certain other members of Congress, such as Senator Turner 
of Washington and Representative Hitt of lUinois. Any- 
thing relating to labor legislation and to measures for con- 
trolling big business or efficiently regulating the giant rail- 
way systems, I was certain to discuss with Senator DoUiver or 
Congressman Hepburn or Congressman Cooper. With men 
like Senator Beveridge, Congressman (afterwards Senator) 
Dixon, and Congressman Murdoch, I was apt to discuss pretty 
nearly everything relating to either our internal or our exter- 
nal affairs There were many, many others. The present 
President of the Senate, Senator Clark, of Arkansas, was as 
fearless and high-minded a representative of the people of the 
United States as I ever dealt with. He was one of the men 
who combined loyalty to his own State with an equally keen 
loyalty to the people of all the United States. He was 
politically opposed to me ; but when the interests of the 
country were at stake, he was incapable of considering party 
differences ; and this was especially his attitude in inter- 
national matters — including certain treaties which most of 
his party colleagues, with narrow lack of patriotism, and 
complete subordination of National to factional interest, 
opposed. I have never anywhere met finer, more faithful, 
more disinterested, and more loyal public servants than 
Senator O. H. Piatt, a Republican, from Connecticut, and 
Senator Cockrell, a Democrat, from Missouri. They 
were already old men when I came to the Presidency ; 
and doubtless there were points on which I seemed to them 
to be extreme and radical ; but eventually they found that 
our motives and beliefs were the same, and they did all in 
their power to help any movement that was for the interest 
of our people as a whole. I had met them when I was Civil 
Service Commissioner and Assistant Secretaryof theNavy. 
All I ever had to do with either was to convince himthata 
given measure I championed was right, and he then at once 
did all he could to have it put into eflFect. If I could not 
convince them, why ! that was my fault, or my misfortune ; 
but if I could convince them, I never had to think again as 



THE PRESIDENCY 385 

to whether they would or would not support me. There 
were many other men of mark in both houses with whom 
I could work on some points, whereas on others we had to 
differ. There was one powerful leader — a burly, forceful 
man, of admirable traits — who had, however, been trained 
in the post-bellum school of business and politics, so that his 
attitude towards life, quite unconsciously, reminded me a 
little of Artemus Ward's view of the Tower of London — 
"If I like it, I'll buy it." There was a big governmental job 
in which this leader was much interested, and in reference 
to which he always wished me to consult a man whom he 
trusted, whom I will call Pitt Rodney. One day I answered 
him, "The trouble with Rodney is that he misestimates 
his relations to cosmos"; to which he responded, "Cosmos 
— Cosmos ? Never heard of him. You stick to Rodney. 
He's your man !" Outside of the public servants there 
were multitudes of men, in newspaper offices, in magazine 
offices, in business or the professions or on farms or in shops, 
who actively supported the policies for which I stood and 
did Vv^ork of genuine leadership which was quite as effective 
as any work done by men in public office. Without the 
active support of these men I would have been powerless. 
In particular, the leading newspaper correspondents at 
Washington were as a whole a singularly able, trustworthy, 
and public-spirited body of men, and the most useful of 
all agents in the fight for efficient and decent government. 
As for the men under me in executive office, I could not 
overstate the debt of gratitude I owe them. From the 
heads of the departments, the Cabinet officers, down, the 
most striking feature of the Administration was the devoted, 
zealous, and efficient work that was done as soon as it became 
understood that the one bond of interest among all of us 
was the desire to make the Government the most effective 
instrument in advancing the interests of the people as a 
whole, the interests of the average men and women of the 
United States and of their children. I do not think I over- 
state the case when I say that most of the men whodid the 
best work under me felt that ours was a partnership, that 
we all stood on the same level of purpose and service, and 



386 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

that it mattered not what position any one of us held so 
long as in that position he gave the very best that was in 
him. We worked very hard ; but I made a point of getting 
a couple of hours off each day for equally vigorous play. 
The men with whom I then played, whom we laughingly 
grew to call the "Tennis Cabinet," have been mentioned in 
a previous chapter of this book in connection with the gift 
they gave me at the last breakfast which they took at the 
White House. There were many others in the public 
service under me with whom I happened not to play, but 
who did their share of our common work just as effectively 
as it was done by us who did play. Of course nothingcould 
have been done in my Administration if it had not been for 
the zeal, intelligence, masterful ability, and downright hard 
labor of these men in countless positions under me. I was 
helpless to do anything except as my thoughts and orders 
were translated into action by them ; and, moreover, each 
of them, as he grew specially fit for his job, used to suggest 
to me the right thought to have, and the right order to give, 
concerning that job. It is of course hard for me to speak 
with cold and dispassionate partiality of these men, who 
were as close to me as were the men of my regiment. But 
the outside observers best fitted to pass judgment about 
them felt as I did. At the end of my Administration Mr. 
Bryce, the British Ambassador, told me that in a long life, 
during which he had studied intimately the government of 
many difi"erent countries, he had never in any country seen 
a more eager, high-minded, and efficient set of public serv- 
ants, men more useful and more creditable to their country, 
than the men then doing the work of the American Govern- 
ment in Washington and in the field. I repeat this state- 
ment with the permission of Mr. Bryce. 

At about the same time, or a little before, in the spring of 
1908, there appeared in the English Fortnightly Review an arti- 
cle, evidently by a competent eye witness, setting forth more 
in detail the same views to which the British Ambassador 
thus privately gave expression. It was in part as follows : 

"Mr. Roosevelt has gathered around him a body of pub- 
lic servants who are nowhere surpassed, I question whether 




From a painting by F. Hopkinson Smith. 

The White House from the Garden. 



388 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

they are anywhere equaled, for efficiency, self-sacrifice, and 
an absolute devotion to their country's interests. Many 
of them are poor men, without private means, who have 
voluntarily abandoned high professional ambitions and 
turned their backs on the rewards of business to serve their 
country on salaries that are not merely inadequate, but 
indecently so. There is not one of them who is not con- 
stantly assailed by offers of positions in the world of com- 
merce, finance, and the law that would satisfy every material 
ambition with which he began life. There is not one of 
them who could not, if he chose, earn outside Washington 
from ten to twenty times the income on which he economizes 
as a State official. But these men are as indifferent to money 
and to the power that money brings as to the allurements of 
Newport and New York, or to merely personal distinctions, 
or to the commercialized ideals which the great bulk of 
their fellow-countrymen accept without question. They are 
content, and more than content, to sink themselves in the 
National service without a thought of private advancement, 
and often at a heavy sacrifice of worldly honors, and to 
toil on . . . sustained by their own native impulse to make 
of patriotism an efficient instrument of public betterment." 

The American public rarely appreciate the high quality 
of the work done by some of our diplomats — work, usually 
entirely unnoticed and unrewarded, which redounds to the 
interest and the honor of all of us. The most useful man in 
the entire diplomatic service, during my presidency, and for 
many years before, was Henry White ; and I say this having 
in mind the high quality of work done by such admirable am- 
bassadors and ministers as Bacon, Meyer, Straus, O'Brien, 
Rockhill, and Egan, to name only a few among many. 
When I left the presidency White was Ambassador to 
France ; shortly afterwards he was removed by Mr. Taft, 
for reasons unconnected with the good of the service. 

The most important factor in getting the right spirit in 
my Administration, next to the insistence upon courage, 
honesty, and a genuine democracy of desire to serve the 
plain people, was my insistence upon the theory that the 
executive power was limited only by specific restrictions and 



THE PRESIDENCY 389 

prohibitions appearing in the Constitution or imposed by the 
Congress under its Constitutional powers, M7 view was 
that every executive officer, and above all every executive 
officer in high position, was a steward of the people bound 
actively and affirmatively to do all he could for the people, 
and not to content himself with the negative merit of keeping 
his talents undamaged in a napkin. I declined to adopt 
the view that what was imperatively necessary for the Na- 
tion could not be done by the President unless he could 
find some specific authorization to do it. My belief was that 
it was not only his right but his duty to do anything that the 
needs of the Nation demanded unless such action was for- 
bidden by the Constitution or by the laws. Under this 
interpretation of executive power I did and caused to be / 
done many things not previously done by the President and 
the heads of the departments. I did not usurp power, 
but I did greatly broaden the use of executive power. In 
other words, I acted for the public welfare, I acted for the 
common well-being of all our people, whenever and in what- 1' 
ever manner was necessary, unless prevented by direct I 
constitutional or legislative prohibition. .1 I did not care a 
rap for the mere form and show of power ; I cared immensely ' 
for the use that could be made of the substance. _J The 
Senate at one time objected to my communicating with them 
in printing, preferring the expensive, foolish, and labo- 
rious practice of writing out the messages by hand. It was 
not possible to return to the outworn archaism of hand 
writing ; but we endeavored to have the printing made as 
pretty as possible. Whether I communicated with the Con- 
gress in writing or by word of mouth, and whether the writing 
was by a machine, or a pen, were equally, and absolutely, 
unimportant matters. The importance lay in what I said 
and in the heed paid to what I said. So as to my meeting 
and consulting Senators, Congressmen, politicians, finan- 
ciers, and labor men. I consulted all who wished to see 
me ; and if I wished to see any one, I sent for him ; and where 
the consultation took place was a matter of supreme unim- 
portance. I consulted every man with the sincere hope 
that I could profit by and follow his advice ; I consulted 



390 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

every member of Congress who wished to be consulted, 
hoping to be able to come to an agreement of action with 
him ; and I always finally acted as my conscience and com- 
mon sense bade me act. 

About appointments I was obliged by the Constitution 
to consult the Senate ; and the long-established custom of 
the Senate meant that in practice this consultation was with 
individual Senators and even with big politicians who stood 
behind the Senators. I was only one-half the appointing 
power ; I nominated ; but the Senate confirmed. In prac- 
tice, by what was called "the courtesy of the Senate," the 
Senate normally refused to confirm any appointment if the 
Senator from the State objected to it. In exceptional cases, 
where I could arouse public attention, I could force through 
the appointment in spite of the opposition of the Senators ; 
in all ordinary cases this was impossible. On the other 
hand, the Senator could of course do nothing for any man 
unless I chose to nominate him. In consequence the Con- 
stitution itself forced the President and the Senators from 
each State to come to a working agreement on the appoint- 
ments in and from that State. 

My course was to insist on absolute fitness, including 
honesty, as a prerequisite to every appointment ; and to 
remove only for good cause, and, where there was such 
cause, to refuse even to discuss with the Senator in interest 
the unfit servant's retention. Subject to these considera- 
tions, I normally accepted each Senator's recommenda- 
tions for offices of a routine kind, such as most post-offices 
and the like, but insisted on myself choosing the men for 
the more important positions. I was willing to take any 
good man for postmaster ; but in the case of a Judge or Dis- 
trict Attorney or Canal Commissioner or Ambassador, I was 
apt to insist either on a given man or else on any man with a 
given class of qualifications. If the Senator deceived me, I 
took care that he had no opportunity to repeat the deception. 

I can perhaps best illustrate my theory of action by two 
specific examples. In New York Governor Odell and 
Senator Piatt sometimes worked in agreement and some- 
times were at swords' points, and both wished to be con- 



THE PRESIDENCY 391 

suited. To a friendly Congressman, who was also their 
friend, I wrote as follows on July 22, 1903 : 

"I want to work with Piatt. I want to work with Odell. 
I want to support both and take the advice of both. But 
of course ultimately I must be the judge as to acting on the 
advice given. When, as in the case of the judgeship, I 
am convinced that the advice of both is wrong, I shall act 
as I did when I appointed Holt. When I can find a friend 
of Odell's like Cooley, who is thoroughly fit for the position 
I desire to fill, it gives me the greatest pleasure to appoint 
him. When Piatt proposes to me a man like Hamilton 
Fish, it is equally a pleasure to appoint him." 

This was written in connection with events which led 
up to my refusing to accept Senator Piatt's or Governor 
Odell's sugestions as to a Federal Judgeship and a Federal 
District Attorneyship, and insisting on the appointment, 
first of Judge Hough and later of District Attorney Stimson ; 
because in each case I felt that the work to be done was of so 
high an order that I could not take an ordinary man. 

The other case was that of Senator Fulton, of Oregon. 
Through Francis Heney I was prosecuting men who were 
implicated In a vast network of conspiracy against the law 
In connection with the theft of public land in Oregon. I 
had been acting on Senator Fulton's recommendations for 
office, in the usual manner. Heney had been insisting that 
Fulton was in league with the men we were prosecuting, 
and that he had recommended unfit men. Fulton had been 
protesting against my following Heney's advice, particularly 
as regards appointing Judge Wolverton as United States 
Judge. Finally Heney laid before me a report which con- 
vinced me of the truth of his statements. I then wrote to 
Fulton as follows, on November 20, 1905 : "My dear 
Senator Fulton : I inclose you herewith a copy of the 
report made to me by Mr. Heney. I have seen the originals 
of the letters from you and Senator Mitchell quoted therein. 
I do not at this time desire to discuss the report itself, which 
of course I must submit to the Attorney-General. But 
I have been obliged to reach the painful conclusion that your 
own letters as therein quoted tend to show that you recom- 



392 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

mended for the position of District Attorney B wlien you 
had good reason to believe that he had himself been guilty 




Copyright by Frances B. Johnston. 



From a painting by Theobald Chartan. 



Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt. 



of fraudulent conduct ; that you recommended C for the 
same position simply because it was for B's interest that he 



THE PRESIDENCY 393 

should be so recommended, and, as there is reason to believe, 
because he had agreed to divide the fees with B if he were 
appointed ; and that you finally recommended the reappoint- 
ment of H with the knowledge that if H were appointed 
he would abstain from prosecuting B for criminal miscon- 
duct, this being why B advocated H's claims for reappoint- 
ment. If you care to make any statement in the matter, 
I shall of course be glad to hear it. As the District Judge 
of Oregon I shall appoint Judge Wolverton." In the letter 
I of course gave In full the names indicated above by ini- 
tials. Senator Fulton gave no explanation. I therefore 
ceased to consult him about appointments under the Depart- 
ment of Justice and the Interior, the two departments in 
which the crookedness had occurred — there was no ques- 
tion of crookedness in the other offices in the State, and 
they could be handled in the ordinary manner. Legal 
proceedings were undertaken against his colleague in the 
Senate, and one of his colleagues In the lower house, and 
the former was convicted and sentenced to the penitentiary. 
In a number of instances the legality of executive acts of 
my Administration was brought before the courts. They 
were uniformly sustained. For example, prior to 1907 
statutes relating to the disposition of coal lands had been 
construed as fixing the flat price at ^10 to $20 per acre. 
The result was that valuable coal lands were sold for wholly 
inadequate prices, chiefly to big corporations. By exec- 
utive order the coal lands were withdrawn and not opened 
for entry until proper classiflcatlon was placed thereon by 
Government agents. There was a great clamor that I 
was usurping legislative power ; but the acts were not assailed 
in court until we brought suits to set aside entries made by 
persons and associations to obtain larger areas than the 
statutes authorized. This position was opposed on the 
ground that the restrictions imposed were illegal ; that_ the 
executive orders were illegal. The Supreme Court sustained 
the Government. In the same way our attitude in the water 
power question was sustained, the Supreme Court holding 
that the Federal Government had the rights we claimed over 
streams that are or may be declared navigable by Congress. 



394 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

Again, when Oklahoma became a State we were obliged to 
use the executive power to protect Indian rights and prop- 
erty, for there had been an enormous amount of fraud in 
the obtaining of Indian lands by white men. Here we 
were denounced as usurping power over a State as well as 
usurping power that did not belong to the executive. The 
Supreme Court sustained our action. 

In connection with the Indians, by the way, it was again 
and again necessary to assert the position of the President 
as steward of the whole people. I had a capital Indian Com- 
missioner, Francis E. Leupp. I found that I could rely 
on his judgment not to get me into fights that were unnec- 
essary, and therefore I always backed him to the limit when 
he told me that a fight was necessary. On one occasion, 
for example, Congress passed a bill to sell to settlers about 
half a million acres of Indian land in Oklahoma at one and 
a half dollars an acre. I refused to sign it, and turned the 
matter over to Leupp. The bill was accordingly with- 
drawn, amended so as to safeguard the welfare of the Indi- 
ans, and the minimum price raised to five dollars an acre. 
Then I signed the bill. We sold that land under sealed 
bids, and realized for the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache 
Indians more than four million dollars — three millions and 
a quarter more than they would have obtained if I had 
signed the bill in its original form. In another case, where 
there had been a division among the Sac and Fox Indians, 
part of the tribe removing to Iowa, the Iowa delegation in 
Congress, backed by two lowans who were members of my 
Cabinet, passed a bill awarding a sum of nearly a half 
million dollars to the Iowa seceders. They had not con- 
sulted the Indian Bureau. Leupp protested against the 
bill, and I vetoed it. A subsequent bill was passed on the 
lines laid down by the Indian Bureau, referring the whole 
controversy to the courts, and the Supreme Court in the end 
justified our position by deciding against the Iowa seceders 
and awarding the money to the Oklahoma stay-at-homes. 

As to all action of this kind there have long been two 
schools of political thought, upheld with equal sincerity. 
The division has not normally been along political, but 



THE PRESIDENCY 395 

temperamental, lines. The course I followed, of regarding 
the executive as subject only to the people, and, under the 
Constitution, bound to serve the people aiBrmatively in 
cases where the Constitution does not explicitly forbid him 
to render the service, was substantially the course followed 
by both Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln. Other 
honorable and well-meaning Presidents, such as James 
Buchanan, took the opposite and, as it seems to me, narrowly 
legalistic view that the President is the servant of Congress 
rather than of the people, and can do nothing, no matter 
how necessary it be to act, unless the Constitution explicitly 
commands the action. Most able lawyers who are past 
middle age take this view, and so do large numbers of well- 
meaning, respectable citizens. My successor in office took 
this, the Buchanan, view of the President's powers and duties. 

For example, under my Administration we found that 
one of the favorite methods adopted by the men desirous of 
stealing the public domain was to carry the decision of 
the Secretary of the Interior into court. By vigorously 
opposing such action, and only by so doing, we were 
able to carry out the policy of properly protecting the 
public domain. My successor not only took the opposite 
view, but recommended to Congress the passage of a bill 
which would have given the courts direct appellate power 
over the Secretary of the Interior in these land matters. 
This bill was reported favorably by Mr. Mondell, Chairman 
of the House Committee on public lands, a Congressman who 
took the lead in every measure to prevent the conservation 
of our natural resources and the preservation of the National 
domain for the use of home-seekers. Fortunately, Congress 
declined to pass the bill. Its passage would have been a 
veritable calamity. 

I acted on the theory that the President could at any time 
in his discretion withdraw from entry any of the public 
lands of the United States and reserve the same for forestry, 
for water-power sites, for irrigation, and other public pur- 
poses. Without such action it would have been impossible 
to stop the activity of the land thieves. No one ventured 
to test its legality by lawsuit. My successor, however, 



396 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

himself questioned it, and referred the matter to Congress. 
Again Congress showed its wisdom hy passing a law which 
gave the President the power which he had long exercised, 
and of which my successor had shorn himself. 

Perhaps the sharp difference between what may be called 
the Lincoln-Jackson and the Buchanan-Taft schools, in 
their views of the power and duties of the President, may be 
best illustrated by comparing the attitude of my successor 
toward his Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Ballinger, when the 
latter was accused of gross misconduct in office, with my 
attitude towards my chiefs of department and other sub- 
ordinate officers. More than once while I was President 
my officials were attacked by Congress, generally because 
these officials did their duty well and fearlessly. In every 
such case I stood by the official and refused to recognize 
the right of Congress to interfere with me excepting by im- 
peachment or in other Constitutional manner. On the 
other hand, wherever I found the officer unfit for his position 
I promptly removed him, even although the most influen- 
tial men in Congress fought for his retention. The Jack- 
son-Lincoln view is that a President who is fit to do good 
work should be able to form his own judgment as to his 
own subordinates, and, above all, of the subordinates stand- 
ing highest and in closest and most intimate touch with him. 
My secretaries and their subordinates were responsible to 
me, and I accepted the responsibility for all their deeds. 
As long as they were satisfactory to me I stood by them 
against every critic or assailant, within or without Con- 
gress ; and as for getting Congress to make up my mind 
for me about them, the thought would have been incon- 
ceivable to me. My successor took the opposite, or Bu- 
chanan, view when he permitted and requested Congress to 
pass judgment on the charges made against Mr. Ballinger 
as an executive officer. These charges were made to the 
President ; the President had the facts before him and 
could get at them at any time, and he alone had power to 
act if the charges were true. However, he permitted and 
requested Congress to investigate Mr. Ballinger. The 
party minority of the committee that investigated him, and 



THE PRESIDENCY 397 

one member of the majority, declared that the charges 
were well founded and that Mr. Balllnger should be removed. 
The other members of the majority declared the charges ill 
founded. The President abode by the view of the majority. 
Of course believers in the Jackson-Lincoln theory of the 
Presidency would not be content with this town meeting 
majority and minority method of determining by another 
branch of the Government what it seems the especial duty 
of the President himself to determine for himself in dealing 
with his own subordinate in his own department. 

There are many worthy people who reprobate the Bu- 
chanan method as a matter of history, but who in actual life 
reprobate still more strongly the Jackson-Lincoln method 
when it is put into practice. These persons conscien- 
tiously believe that the President should solve every doubt 
in favor of inaction as against action, that he should con- 
strue strictly and narrowly the Constitutional grant of 
powers both to the National Government, and to the Pres- 
ident within the National Government. In addition, how- 
ever, to the men who conscientiously believe in this course 
from high, although as I hold misguided, motives, there 
are many men who affect to believe in it merely because 
it enables them to attack and to try to hamper, for partisan 
or personal reasons, an executive whom they dislike. There 
are other men in whom, especially when they are themselves 
in office, practical adherence to the Buchanan principle 
represents not well-thought-out devotion to an unwise 
course, but simple weakness of character and desire to avoid 
trouble and responsibility. Unfortunately, in practice it 
makes little diiference which class of ideas actuates the 
President, who by his action sets a cramping precedent. 
Whether he is highminded and wrongheaded or merely 
infirm of purpose, whether he means well feebly or is bound 
by a mischievous misconception of the powers and duties 
of the National Government and of the President, the effect 
of his actions is the same. The President's duty is to act 
so that he himself and his subordinates shall be able to do 
efficient work for the people, and this efficient work he and 
they cannot do if Congress is permitted to undertake the 




_<^riurj Initiidot , 



Reproduced by permission of the proprietors of Punch. Cartoon by Bernard Partridge. 

The Rough Rider. 

With Mr. Punch's best wishes to Colonel Roosevelt, President of the United States. 

Punch's congratulations when Colonel Roosevelt became President. 



THE PRESIDENCY 

task of making up his mind for him as to how he shall per- 
from what is clearly his sole duty 

One of the ways in which by independent action of the 
executive we were able to accomplish an immense amount of 
work for the public was through volunteer unpaid com- 
missions appointed by the President. It was possible to 
get the work done by these volunteer commissions only 
because of the enthusiasm for the public service which, 
starting in the higher offices at Washington, made itself 
felt throughout the Government departments — as I have 
said, I never knew harder and more disinterested work 
done by any people than was done by the men and women 
of all ranks in the Government service. The contrast 
was really extraordinary between their live interest in their 
work and the traditional clerical apathy which has so often 
been the distinguishing note of governmental work in Wash- 
ington. Most of the public service performed by these 
volunteer commissions, carried on without a cent of pay to 
the men themselves, and wholly without cost to the Govern- 
ment, was done by men the great majority of whom were 
already in the Government service and already charged 
with responsibilities amounting each to a full man's job. 

The first of these Commissions was the Commission on 
the Organization of Government Scientific Work, whose 
Chairman was Charles D. Walcott. Appointed March 13, 
1903, its duty was to report directly to the President "upon 
the organization, present condition, and needs of the Exec- 
utive Government work wholly or partly scientific in char- 
acter, and upon the steps which should be taken, if any, 
to prevent the duplication of such work, to co-ordinate its 
various branches, to increase its efficiency and economy, 
and to promote its usefulness to the Nation at large." 
This Commission spent four months in an examination 
which covered the work of about thirty of the larger scien- 
tific and executive bureaus of the Government, and pre- 
pared a report which furnished the basis for numerous 
improvements in the Government service. 

Another Commission, appointed June 2, 1905, was that 
on Department Methods — Charles H. Keep, Chairman 




400 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

— whose task was to "find out what changes are needed 
to place the conduct of the executive business of the Govern- 
ment in all its branches on the most economical and effective 
basis in the light of the best modern business practice." 
The letter appointing this Commission laid down nine 
principles of effective Governmental work, the most striking 
of which was : "The existence of any method, standard, 
custom, or practice is no reason for its continuance when a 
better is offered." This Commission, composed like that 
just described, of men already charged with important 
work, performed its functions wholly without cost to the 
Government. It was assisted by a body of about seventy 
experts in the Government departments chosen for their 
special qualifications to carry forward a study of the best 
methods in business, and organized into assistant com- 
mittees under the leadership of Overton W. Price, Secretary 
of the Commission. These assistant committees, all of 
whose members were still carrying on their regular work, 
made their reports during the last half of 1906. The Com- 
mittee informed itself fully regarding the business methods 
of practically every individual branch of the business of the 
Government, and effected a marked improvement in general 
efficiency throughout the service. The conduct of the 
routine business of the Government had never been thor- 
oughly overhauled before, and this examination of it resulted 
in the promulgation of a set of working principles for the 
transaction of public business which are as sound to-day as 
they were when the Committee finished its work. The 
somewhat elaborate and costly investigations of Govern- 
ment business methods since made have served merely to 
confirm the findings of the Committee on Departmental 
Methods, which were achieved without costing the Gov- 
ernment a dollar. The actual saving in the conduct of the 
business of the Government through the better methods 
thus introduced amounted yearly to many hundreds of 
thousands of dollars ; but a far more important gain was due 
to the remarkable success of the Commission in establishing 
a new point of view in public servants toward their work. 
The need for improvement in the Governmental methods 



THE PRESIDENCY 401 

of transacting business may be illustrated by an actual case. 
An officer in charge of an Indian agency made a requisition 
in the autumn for a stove costing seven dollars, certifying 
at the same time that it was needed to keep the infirmary 
warm during the winter, because the old stove was worn 
out. Thereupon the customary papers went through the 
customary routine, without unusual delay at any point. 
The transaction moved like a glacier with dignity to its 
appointed end, and the stove reached the infirmary in good 
order in time for the Indian agent to acknowledge its arrival 
in these words : "The stove is here. So is spring." 

The Civil Service Commission, under men like John 
Mcllhenny and Garfield, rendered service without which 
the Government could have been conducted with neither 
efficiency nor honesty. The politicians were not the only 
persons at fault ; almost as much improper pressure for 
appointments is due to mere misplaced sympathy, and to the 
spiritless inefficiency which seeks a Government office as a 
haven for the incompetent. An amusing feature of office 
seeking is that each man desiring an office is apt to look 
down on all others with the same object as forming an objec- 
tionable class with which he has nothing in common. At 
the time of the eruption of Mt. Pelee, when among others 
the American Consul was killed, a man who had long been 
seeking an appointment promptly applied for the vacancy. 
He was a good man, of persistent nature, who felt I had been 
somewhat blind to his merits. The morning after the 
catastrophe he wrote, saying that as the consul was dead 
he would like his place, and that I could surely give it to 
him, because "even the office seekers could not have applied 
for it yet !" 

The method of public service involved in the appointment 
and the work of the two commissions just described was 
applied also in the establishment of four other commis- 
sions, each of which performed its task without salary or 
expense for its members, and wholly without cost to the 
Government. The other four commissions were : 

Commission on Public Lands ; 

Commission on Inland Waterways ; 



402 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

Commission on Country Life ; and 

Commission on National Conservation. 

All of these commissions were suggested to me by GifTord 
Pinchot, who served upon them all. The work of the last 
four will be touched upon in connection with the chapter 
on Conservation. These commissions by their reports and 
findings directly interfered with many place-holders who were 
doing inefficient work, and their reports and the action taken 
thereon by the Administration strengthened the hands of 
those administrative officers who in the various depart- 
ments, and especially in the Secret Service, were proceeding 
against land thieves and other corrupt wrong-doers. More- 
over, the mere fact that they did efficient work for the pub- 
lic along lines new to veteran and cynical politicians of the 
old type created vehement hostility to them. Senators like 
Mr. Hale and Congressmen like Mr. Tawney were espe- 
cially bitter against these commissions ; and towards the 
end of my term they were followed by the majority of their 
fellows in both houses, who had gradually been sundered 
from me by the open or covert hostility of the financial or 
Wall Street leaders, and of the newspaper editors and poli- 
ticians who did their bidding in the interest of privilege. 
These Senators and Congressmen asserted that they had 
a right to forbid the President profiting by the unpaid 
advice of disinterested experts. Of course I declined to 
admit the existence of any such right, and continued the 
Commissions. My successor acknowledged the right, 
upheld the view of the politicians in question, and aban- 
doned the commissions, to the lasting detriment of the peo- 
ple as a whole. 

One thing is worth pointing out : During the seven and a 
half years of my Administration we greatly and usefully 
extended the sphere of Governmental action, and yet we 
reduced the burden of the taxpayers ; for we reduced the 
interest-bearing debt by more than ^90,000,000. To 
achieve a marked increase in efficiency and at the same time 
an increase in economy is not an easy feat; but we per- 
formed it. 

There was one ugly and very necessary task. This was 



THE PRESIDENCY 403 

to discover and root out corruption wherever it was found 
in any of the departments. The first essential was to make 
it clearly understood that no political or business or social 
influence of any kind would for one moment be even con- 
sidered when the honesty of a public official was at issue. 
It took a little time to get this fact thoroughly drilled into 
the heads both of the men within the service and of the 
political leaders without. The feat was accomplished so 
thoroughly that every effort to interfere in any shape or way 
with the course of justice was abandoned definitely and for 
good. Most, although not all, of the frauds occurred in 
connection with the Post-Office Department and the Land 
Office. 

It was in the Post-Office Department that we first defi- 
nitely established the rule of conduct which became universal 
throughout the whole service. Rumors of corruption in 
the department became rife, and finally I spoke of them 
to the then First Assistant Postmaster-General, afterwards 
Postmaster-General, Robert J. Wynne. He reported to 
me, after some investigation, that in his belief there was 
doubtless corruption, but that it was very difficult to get at 
it, and that the offenders were confident and defiant because 
of their great political and business backing and the rami- 
fications of their crimes. Talking the matter over with 
him, I came to the conclusion that the right man to carry 
on the investigation was the then Fourth Assistant Post- 
master-General, now a Senator from Kansas, Joseph L. 
Bristow, who possessed the iron fearlessness needful to 
front such a situation. Mr. Bristow had perforce seen a 
good deal of the seamy side of politics, and of the extent 
of the unscrupulousness with which powerful influence was 
brought to bear to shield offenders. Before undertaking 
the investigation he came to see me, and said that he did 
not wish to go into it unless he could be assured that I 
would stand personally behind him, and, no matter where 
his inquiries led him, would support him and prevent inter- 
ference with him. I answered that I would certainly do so. 
He went into the investigation with relentless energy, 
dogged courage, and keen intelligence. His success was 



404 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

complete, and the extent of his services to the Nation are 
not easily to be exaggerated. He unearthed a really appall- 
ing amount of corruption, and he did his work with such 
absolute thoroughness that the corruption was completely 
eradicated. 

We had, of course, the experience usual in all such investi- 
gations. At first there was popular incredulity and disbelief 
that there was much behind the charges, or that much 
could be unearthed. Then when the corruption was shown 
there followed a yell of anger from all directions, and a 
period during which any man accused was forthwith held 
guilty by the public ; and violent demands were made by 
the newspapers for the prosecution not only of the men who 
could be prosecuted with a fair chance of securing conviction 
and imprisonment, but of other men whose misconduct had 
been such as to warrant my removing them from office, 
but against whom it was not possible to get the kind of 
evidence which would render likely conviction in a criminal 
case. Suits were brought against all the officials whom we 
thought we could convict ; and the public complained bitterly 
that we did not bring further suits. We secured several 
convictions, including convictions of the most notable 
offenders. The trials consumed a good deal of time. Pub- 
lic attention was attracted to something else. Indifference 
succeeded to excitement, and in some subtle way the juries 
seemed to respond to the indifference. One of the worst 
offenders was acquitted by a jury; whereupon not a few of 
the same men who had Insisted that the Government was 
derelict in not criminally prosecuting every man whose mis- 
conduct was established so as to make it necessary to turn 
him out of office, now turned round and. Inasmuch as the 
jury had not found this man guilty of crime, demanded 
that he should be reinstated In office ! It is needless to 
say that the demand was not granted. There were two or 
three other acquittals, of prominent outsiders. Neverthe- 
less the net result was that the majority of the worst offend- 
ers were sent to prison, and the remainder dismissed from 
the Government service, if they were public officials, and if 
they were not public officials at least so advertised as to 



THE PRESIDENCY 405 

render It impossible that they should ever again have deal- 
ings with the Government. The department was abso- 
lutely cleaned and became one of the very best in the Gov- 
ernment. Several Senators came to me — Mr. Garfield was 
present on the occasion — and said that they were glad I 
was putting a stop to corruption, but they hoped I would 
avoid all scandal ; that if I would make an example of some 
one man and then let the others quietly resign, it would 
avoid a disturbance which might hurt the party. They were 
advising me in good faith, and I was as courteous as pos- 
sible in my answer, but explained that I would have to act 
with the utmost rigor against the offenders, no matter what 
the effect on the party, and, moreover, that I did not believe 
it would hurt the party. It did not hurt the party. It 
helped the party. A favorite war-cry in American political 
life has always been, "Turn the rascals out." We made it 
evident that, as far as we were concerned, this war-cry was 
pointless ; for we turned our own rascals out. 

There were important and successful land fraud prose- 
cutions in several Western States. Probably the most 
important were the cases prosecuted in Oregon by Francis 
J. Heney, with the assistance of William J. Burns, a secret 
service agent who at that time began his career as a great 
detective. It would be impossible to overstate the services 
rendered to the cause of decency and honesty by Messrs. 
Heney and Burns. Mr. Heney was my close and intimate 
adviser professionally and non-professionally, not only as 
regards putting a stop to frauds in the public lands, but in 
many other matters of vital interest to the Republic. No 
man in the country has waged the battle for National 
honesty with greater courage and success, with more whole- 
hearted devotion to the public good ; and no man has been 
more traduced and maligned by the wrong-doing agents and 
representatives of the great sinister forces of evil. He 
secured the conviction of various men of high political and 
financial standing in connection with the Oregon prosecu- 
tions ; he and Burns behaved with scrupulous fairness and 
propriety; but their services to the public caused them to 
incur the bitter hatred of those who had wronged the pub- 



4o6 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

lie, and after I left office the National Administration turned 
against them. One of the most conspicuous of the men 
whom they had succeeded in convicting was pardoned by 
President Taft — in spite of the fact that the presiding 
Judge, Judge Hunt, had held that the evidence amply 
warranted the conviction, and had sentenced the man to 
imprisonment. As was natural, the one hundred and forty- 
six land-fraud defendants in Oregon, who included the fore- 
most machine political leaders in the State, furnished the 
backbone of the opposition to me in the Presidential contest 
of 191 2. The opposition rallied behind Messrs. Taft and 
LaFollette ; and although I carried the primaries handsomely, 
half of the delegates elected from Oregon under instructions 
to vote for me, sided with my opponents in the National 
Convention — and as regards some of them I became con- 
vinced that the mainspring of their motive lay in the intrigue 
for securing the pardon of certain of the men whose con- 
viction Heney had secured. 

Land fraud and post-office cases were not the only ones. 
We were especially zealous in prosecuting all of the "higher 
up" offenders in the realms of politics and finance who 
swindled on a large scale. Special assistants of the Attor- 
ney-General, such as Mr. Frank Kellogg, of St. Paul, and 
various first-class Federal district attorneys in different 
parts of the country secured notable results : Mr. Stimson 
and his assistants, Messrs. Wise, Denison, and Frank- 
furter, in New York, for instance, in connection with the 
prosecution of the Sugar Trust and of the banker Morse, 
and of a great metropolitan newspaper for opening its 
columns to obscene and immoral advertisements ; and in 
St. Louis Messrs. Dyer and Nortoni, who, among other 
services, secured the conviction and imprisonment of Senator 
Burton, of Kansas; and in Chicago Mr. Sims, who raised 
his office to the highest pitch of efficiency, secured the con- 
viction of the banker Walsh and of the Beef Trust, and first 
broke through the armor of the Standard Oil Trust. It is 
not too much to say that these men, and others like them, 
worked a complete revolution in the enforcement of the 
Federal laws, and made their offices organized legal machines 



THE PRESIDENCY 407 

fit and ready to conduct smashing fights for the people's 
rights and to enforce the laws in aggressive fashion. When 
I took the Presidency, it was a common and bitter saying 
that a big man, a rich man, could not be put in jail. We 
put many big and rich men in jail; two United States 
Senators, for instance, and among others two great bankers, 
one in New York and one in Chicago. One of the United 
States Senators died, the other served his term. (One of 
the bankers was released from prison by executive order 
after I left office.) These were merely individual cases 
among many others like them. Moreover, we were just 
as relentless in dealing with crimes of violence among the 
disorderly and brutal classes as in dealing with the crimes of 
cunning and fraud of which certain wealthy men and big 
politicians were guilty. Mr. Sims in Chicago was partic- 
ularly efficient in sending to the penitentiary nurnbers of the 
infamous men who batten on the "white slave" traffic, 
after July, 1908, when by proclamation I announced the 
adherence of our Government to the international agree- 
ment for the suppression of the traffic. 

The views I then held and now hold were expressed in a 
memorandum made in the case of a Negro convicted of the 
rape of a young Negro girl, practically a child. A petition 
for his pardon had been sent me. 



White House, Washington, D. C, 

August 8, 1904. 

The application for the commutation of sentence of 
John W. Burley is denied. This man committed the most 
hideous crime known to our laws, and twice before he has 
committed crimes of a similar, though less horrible, charac- 
ter. In my judgment there is no justification whatever 
for paying heed to the allegations that he is not of sound 
mind, allegations made after the trial and conviction. 
Nobody would pretend that there has ever been any such 
degree of mental unsoundness shown as would make people 
even consider sending him to an asylum if he had not com- 
mitted this crime. Under such circumstances he should 



4o8 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

certainly be esteemed sane enough to suffer the penalty 
for his monstrous deed. I have scant sympathy with the 
plea of insanity advanced to save a man from the conse- 
quences of crime, when unless that crime had been com- 
mitted it would have been impossible to persuade any 
responsible authority to commit him to an asylum as insane. 
Among the most dangerous criminals, and especially among 
those prone to commit this particular kind of offense, there 
are plenty of a temper so fiendish or so brutal as to be incom- 
patible with any other than a brutish order of intelligence ; 
but these men are nevertheless responsible for their acts ; 
and nothing more tends to encourage crime among such men 
than the belief that through the plea of insanity or any other 
method it is possible for them to escape paying the just 
penalty of their crimes. The crime in question is one to 
the existence of which we largely owe the existence of that 
spirit of lawlessness which takes form in lynching. It is a 
crime so revolting that the criminal is not entitled to one 
particle of sympathy from any human being. It is essential 
that the punishment for it should be not only as certain 
but as swift as possible. The jury in this case did their 
duty by recommending the infliction of the death penalty. 
It is to be regretted that we do not have special provision 
for more summary dealing with this type of cases. The 
more we do what in us lies to secure certain and swift jus- 
tice in dealing with these cases, the more effectively do we 
work against the growth of that lynching spirit which is so 
full of evil omen for this people, because it seeks to avenge 
one infamous crime by the commission of another of equal 
infamy. 

The application is denied and the sentence will be car- 
ried into effect. 

(Signed) Theodore Roosevelt. 

One of the most curious incidents of lawlessness with which 
I had to deal affected an entire State. The State of Nevada 
in the year 1907 was gradually drifting into utter govern- 
mental impotence and downright anarchy. The people 
were at heart all right ; but the forces of evil had been per- 



THE PRESIDENCY 409 

mitted to get the upper hand, and for the time being the 
decent citizens had become helpless to assert themselves 
either by controlling the greedy corporations on the one 
hand or repressing the murderous violence of certain law- 
less labor organizations on the other hand. The Governor 
of the State was a Democrat and a Southern man, and in 
the abstract a strong believer in the doctrine of State's 
Rights. But his experience finally convinced him that he 
could obtain order only through the intervention of the 
National Government ; and then he went over too far and 
wished to have the National Government do his police 
work for him. In the Rocky Mountain States there had 
existed for years what was practically a condition of almost 
constant war between the wealthy mine-owners and the 
Western Federation of Miners, at whose head stood Messrs. 
Haywood, Pettibone, and Moyer, who were about that time 
indicted for the murder of the Governor of Idaho. Much 
that was lawless, much that was indefensible, had been done 
by both sides. The Legislature of Nevada was in sympathy 
with, or at least was afraid of not expressing sympathy for, 
Messrs. Moyer, Haywood, Pettibone, and their associates. 
The State was practically without any police, and the Gov- 
ernor had recommended the establishment of a State Con- 
stabulary, along the lines of the Texas Rangers ; but the 
Legislature rejected his request. The Governor reported 
to me the conditions as follows. During 1907 the Gold- 
field mining district became divided into two hostile camps. 
Half of the Western Federation of Miners were constantly 
armed, and arms and ammunition were purchased and 
kept by the union as a body, while the mine-owners on their 
side retained large numbers of watchmen and guards who 
were also armed and always on duty. In addition to these 
opposing forces there was, as the Governor reported, an 
unusually large number of the violent and criminal element, 
always attracted to a new and booming mining camp. 
Under such conditions the civil authorities were practically 
powerless, and the Governor, being helpless to avert civil 
war, called on me to keep order. I accordingly threw in 
a body of regular troops under General Funston. These 




JJciwri^ltriLc .^ 



Reproduced by permission of the proprietors of Punch. 



Cartoon by Bernard Partridge. 



The Soap-and- Water Cure. 

President Roosevelt : "As I recently remarked at Nashville, Tenn. : 'During the next six- 
teen months of my term of ofSce this policy shall be persevered in unswervingly.' " 

American Eagle : " Je-hosaphat ! " 



THE PRESIDENCY 411 

kept order completely, and the Governor became so well 
satisfied that he thought he would like to have them there 
permanently ! This seemed to me unhealthy, and on 
December 28, 1907, I notified him that while I would do 
my duty^ the first need was that the State authorities 
should do theirs, and that the first step towards this was the 
assembling of the Legislature. I concluded my telegram : 
"If within five days from receipt of this telegram you shall 
have issued the necessary notice to convene the Legislature 
of Nevada, I shall continue the troops during a period of 
three weeks. If when the term of five days has elapsed 
the notice has not been issued, the troops will be immediately 
returned to their former stations." I had already investi- 
gated the situation through a committee, composed of the 
Chief of the Bureau of Corporations, Mr. H. K. Smith, the 
Chief of the Bureau of Labor, Mr. C. P. Neill, and the Comp- 
troller of the Treasury, Mr. Lawrence Murray. These 
men I could thoroughly trust, and their report, which was 
not over-favorable to either side, had convinced me that the 
only permanent way to get good results was to insist on the 
people of the State themselves grappling with and solving their 
own troubles. The Governor summoned the Legislature, 
it met, and the constabulary bill was passed. The troops 
remained in Nevada until time had been given for the 
State authorities to organize their force so that violence could 
at once be checked. Then they were withdrawn. 
/Nor was it only as regards their own internal affairs that 
I sometimes had to get into active communication with the 
State authorities. There has always been a strong feeling 
in California against the immigration of Asiatic laborers, 
whether these are wage-workers or men who occupy and till 
the soil. I believe this to be fundamentally a sound and 
proper attitude, an attitude which must be insisted upon, 
and yet which can be insisted upon in such a manner and 
with such courtesy and such sense of mutual fairness and 
reciprocal obligation and respect as not to give any just 
cause of offense to Asiatic peoples. In the present state of 
the world's progress it is highly inadvisable that peoples 
in wholly different stages of civilization, or of wholly different 



412 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

types of civilization even although both equally high, shall 
be thrown into intimate contact. This is especially unde- 
sirable when there is a difference of both race and standard 
of living. In California the question became acute in con- 
nection with the admission of the Japanese. I then had and 
now have a hearty admiration for the Japanese people. 
I believe in them ; I respect their great qualities ; I wish 
that our American people had many of these qualities. 
Japanese and American students, travelers, scientific and 
literary men, merchants engaged in international trade, 
and the like can meet on terms of entire equality and should 
be given the freest access each to the country of the other. 
But the Japanese themselves would not tolerate the intrusion 
into their country of a mass of Americans who would dis- 
place Japanese in the business of the land. I think they are 
entirely right in this position. I would be the first to admit 
that Japan has the absolute right to declare on what terms 
foreigners shall be admitted to work in her country, or to own 
land in her country, or to become citizens of her country. 
America has and must insist upon the same right. The peo- 
ple of California were right in insisting that the Japanese 
should not come thither in mass, that there should be no 
influx of laborers, of agricultural workers, or small trades- 
men — in short, no mass settlement or immigration. 

Unfortunately, during the latter part of my term as 
President certain unwise and demagogic agitators in Cali- 
fornia, to show their disapproval of the Japanese coming into 
the State, adopted the very foolish procedure of trying to 
provide by law that the Japanese children should not be 
allowed to attend the schools with the white children, and 
offensive and injurious language was used in connection 
with the proposal. The Federal Administration promptly 
took up the matter with the California authorities, and I 
got into personal touch with them. At my request the 
Mayor of San Francisco and other leaders in the movement 
came on to see me. I explained that the duty of the Na- 
tional Government was twofold : in the first place, to meet 
every reasonable wish and every real need of the people of 
California or any other State in dealing with the people of 



THE PRESIDENCY 413 

a foreign power; and, in the next place, itself exclusively 
and fully to exercise the right of dealing with this foreign 
power. 

Inasmuch as in the last resort, including that last of all 
resorts, war, the dealing of necessity had to be between 
the foreign power and the National Government, it was 
impossible to admit that the doctrine of State sovereignty 
could be invoked in such a matter. As soon as legislative 
or other action in any State affects a foreign nation, then 
the affair becomes one for the Nation, and the State 
should deal with the foreign power purely through the 
Nation. 

I explained that I was in entire sympathy with the people 
of California as to the subject of immigration of the Japanese 
in mass ; but that of course I wished to accomplish the object 
they had in view in the way that would be most courteous 
and most agreeable to the feelings of the Japanese ; that all 
relations between the two peoples must be those of recip- 
rocal justice, and that it was an intolerable outrage on the 
part of newspapers and public men to use offensive and 
insulting language about a high-spirited, sensitive, and 
friendly people ; and that such action as was proposed 
about the schools could only have bad effects, and would 
in no shape or way achieve the purpose that the Californians 
had in mind. I also explained that I would use every 
resource of the National Government to protect the Japanese 
in their treaty rights, and would count upon the State 
authorities backing me up to the limit in such action. 
In short, I insisted upon the two points (i) that the Nation 
and not the individual States must deal with matters of 
such international significance and must treat foreign 
nations with entire courtesy and respect; and (2) that the 
Nation would at once, and in efficient and satisfactory 
manner, take action that would meet the needs of California. 
I both asserted the power of the Nation and offered a full 
remedy for the needs of the State. This is the right, and 
the only right, course. The worst possible course in such a 
case is to fail to insist on the right of the Nation, to offer 
no action of the Nation to remedy what is wrong, and yet 



414 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

to try to coax the State not to do what It Is mistakenly 
encouraged to beheve it has the power to do, when no other 
alternative Is offered. 

After a good deal of discussion, we came to an entirely 
satisfactory conclusion. The obnoxious school legislation 
was abandoned, and I secured an arrangement with Japan 
under which the Japanese themselves prevented any emi- 
gration to our country of their laboring people, It being 
distinctly understood that If there was such emigration the 
United States would at once pass an exclusion law. It was 
of course Infinitely better that the Japanese should stop 
their own people from coming rather than that we should 
have to stop them ; but It was necessary for us to hold this 
power in reserve^ 

Unfortunately, after I left office, a most mistaken and 
ill-advised policy was pursued towards Japan, combining 
irritation and inefficiency, which culminated in a treaty 
under which we surrendered this important and necessary 
right. It was alleged In excuse that the treaty provided 
for Its own abrogation ; but of course It is Infinitely better 
to have a treaty under which the power to exercise a 
necessary right Is explicitly retained rather than a treaty 
so drawn that recourse must be had to the extreme step of 
abrogating if it ever becomes necessary to exercise the right 
In question. 

The arrangement we made worked admirably, and entirely 
achieved Its purpose. No small part of our success was due 
to the fact that we succeeded In impressing on the Japanese 
that we sincerely admired and respected them, and desired 
to treat them with the utmost consideration. I cannot 
too strongly express my Indignation with, and abhorrence 
of, reckless public writers and speakers who, with coarse 
and vulgar Insolence, Insult the Japanese people and thereby 
do the greatest wrong not only to Japan but to their own 
country. 

Such conduct represents the nadir of underbreeding and 
folly. The Japanese are one of the great nations of the 
world, entitled to stand, and standing, on a footing of 
full equality with any nation of Europe or America. I 



THE PRESIDENCY 415 

have the heartiest admiration for them. They can teach 
us much. Their civilization is in some respects higher than 
our own. It is eminently undesirable that Japanese and 
Americans should attempt to live together in masses ; any 
such attempt would be sure to result disastrously, and the 
far-seeing statesmen of both countries should join to pre- 
vent it. 

But this is not because either nation is inferior to the 
other; it is because they are different. The two peoples 
represent two civilizations which, although in many re- 
spects equally high, are so totally distinct in their past 
history that it is idle to expect in one or two generations 
to overcome this difference. One civilization is as old as 
the other; and in neither case is the line of cultural descent 
coincident with that of ethnic descent. Unquestionably 
the ancestors of the great majority both of the modern 
Americans and the modern Japanese were barbarians 
in that remote past which saw the origins of the cultured 
peoples to which the Americans and the Japanese of to-day 
severally trace their civilizations. But the lines of develop- 
ment of these two civilizations, of the Orient and the Occi- 
dent, have been separate and divergent since thousands 
of years before the Christian era ; certainly since that hoary 
eld in which the Akkadian predecessors of the Chaldean 
Semites held sway in Mesopotamia. An effort to mix to- 
gether, out of hand, the peoples representing the culminating 
points of two such lines of divergent cultural development 
would be fraught with peril ; and this, I repeat, because the 
two are different, not because either is inferior to the other. 
Wise statesmen, looking to the future, will for the present 
endeavor to keep the two nations from mass contact and 
intermingling, precisely because they wish to keep each in 
relations of permanent good will and friendship with the 
other. 

Exactly what was done in the particular crisis to which 
I refer is shown in the following letter which, after our 
policy had been successfully put into execution, I sent to 
the then Speaker of the California lower house of the Legis- 
lature : 



4i6 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

The White House, Washington, 
February 8, 1909. 
Hon. p. a. Stanton, 

Speaker of the Assembly, 

Sacramento, California : 

I trust there will be no misunderstanding of the Federal 
Government's attitude. We are jealously endeavoring 
to guard the interests of California and of the entire West in 
accordance with the desires of our Western people. By 
friendly agreement with Japan, we are now carrying out a 
policy which, while meeting the interests and desires of the 
Pacific slope, is yet compatible, not merely with mutual 
self-respect, but with mutual esteem and admiration between 
the Americans and Japanese. The Japanese Government 
is loyally and in good faith doing its part to carry out this 
policy, precisely as the American Government is doing. 
The policy aims at mutuality of obligation and behavior. 
In accordance with it the purpose is that the Japanese 
shall come here exactly as Americans go to Japan, which is in 
efi'ect that travelers, students, persons engaged in inter- 
national business, men who sojourn for pleasure or study, 
and the like, shall have the freest access from one country 
to the other, and shall be sure of the best treatment, but 
that there shall be no settlement in mass by the people of 
either country in the other. During the last six months 
under this policy more Japanese have left the country than 
have come in, and the total number in the United States 
has diminished by over two thousand. These figures are 
absolutely accurate and cannot be impeached. In other 
words, if the present policy is consistently followed and 
works as well in the future as it is now working, all difficulties 
and causes of friction will disappear, while at the same time 
each nation will retain its self-respect and the good will of 
the other. But such a bill as this school bill accomplishes 
literally nothing whatever in the line of the object aimed at, 
and gives just and grave cause for irritation ; while in addi- 
tion the United States Government would be obliged imme- 



THE PRESIDENCY 417 

diately to take action in the Federal courts to test such 
legislation, as we hold it to be clearly a violation of the treaty. 
On this point I refer you to the numerous decisions of the 
United States Supreme Court in regard to State laws which 
violate treaty obligations of the United States. The legis- 
lation would accomplish nothing beneficial and would 
certainly cause some mischief, and might cause very grave 
mischief. In short, the policy of the Administration is to 
combine the maximum of efficiency in achieving the real 
object which the people of the Pacific Slope have at heart, 
with the minimum of friction and trouble, while the mis- 
guided men who advocate such action as this against which 
I protest are following a policy which combines the very 
minimum of efficiency with the maximum of insult, and 
which, while totally failing to achieve any real result for good, 
yet might accomplish an infinity of harm. If in the next 
year or two the action of the Federal Government fails 
to achieve what it is now achieving, then through the further 
action of the President and Congress it can be made entirely 
efficient. I am sure that the sound judgment of the people 
of California will support you, Mr. Speaker, in your effort. 
Let me repeat that at present we are actually doing the 
very thing which the people of California wish to be done, 
and to upset the arrangement under which this is being 
done cannot do good and may do great harm. If in the next 
year or two the figures of immigration prove that the arrange- 
ment which has worked so successfully during the last six 
months is no longer working successfully, then there would 
be ground for grievance and for the reversal by the National 
Government of its present policy. But at present the policy 
is working well, and until it works badly it would be a grave 
misfortune to change it, and when changed it can only be 
changed effectively by the National Government. 

Theodore Roosevelt. 

In foreign and domestic affairs alike the policy pursued 
during my Administration was simple. In foreign affairs 
the principle from which we never deviated was to have the 
Nation behave toward other nations precisely as a strong, 




From a painting by Jolin S. f^argtui. 

Rear Portico — The White Hjuse. 



THE PRESIDENCY 419 

honorable, and upright man behaves In deaHng with his 
fellow-men. There is no such thing as international law 
in the sense that there is municipal law or law within a 
nation. Within the nation there is always a judge, and a 
policeman who stands back of the judge. The whole system 
of law depends first upon the fact that there is a judge 
competent to pass judgment, and second upon the fact 
that there is some competent officer whose duty it is to 
carry out this judgment, by force if necessary. In inter- 
national law there is no judge, unless the parties in interest 
agree that one shall be constituted ; and there is no police- 
man to carry out the judge's orders. In consequence, as 
yet each nation must depend upon itself for its own pro- 
tection. The frightful calamities that have befallen China, 
solely because she has had no power of self-defense, ought 
to make it inexcusable in any wise American citizen to pre- 
tend to patriotic purpose, and yet to fail to insist that the 
United States shall keep in a condition of ability if necessary 
to assert its rights with a strong hand. It is folly of the 
criminal type for the Nation not to keep up its navy, not 
to fortify its vital strategic points, and not to provide an 
adequate army for its needs. On the other hand, it is 
wicked for the Nation to fail in either justice, courtesy, or 
consideration when dealing with any other power, big or 
little. John Hay was Secretary of State when I became 
President, and continued to serve under me until his death, 
and his and my views as to the attitude that the Nation 
should take in foreign affairs were identical, both as regards 
our duty to be able to protect ourselves against the strong 
and as regards our duty always to act not only justly but 
generously toward the weak. 

John Hay was one of the most delightful of companions, 
one of the most charming of all men of cultivation and 
action. Our views on foreign affairs coincided absolutely ; 
but, as was natural enough, in domestic matters he felt 
much more conservative than he did in the days when as 
a young man he was private secretary to the great radical 
democratic leader of the '6o's, Abraham Lincoln. He was 
fond of jesting with me about my supposedly dangerous 



420 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

tendencies in favor of labor against capital. When I was 
inaugurated on March 4, 1905, I wore a ring he sent me the 
evening before, containing the hair of Abraham Lincoln. 
This ring was on my finger when the Chief Justice adminis- 
tered to me the oath of allegiance to the United States ; 
I often thereafter told John Hay that when I wore such a 
ring on such an occasion I bound myself more than ever to 
treat the Constitution, after the manner of Abraham Lin- 
coln, as a document which put human rights above property 
rights when the two conflicted. The last Christmas John 
Hay was alive he sent me the manuscript of a Norse saga 
by William Morris, with the following note : 

Christmas Eve, 1904. 

Dear Theodore : In your quality of Viking this Norse 
saga should belong to you, and in your character of Enemy 
of Property this Ms. of William Morris will appeal to you. 
Wishing you a Merry Christmas and many happy years, 
I am yours affectionately, 

John Hay. 

In internal aflfairs I cannot say that I entered the 
Presidency with any deliberately planned and far-reaching 
scheme of social betterment. I had, however certain strong 
convictions ; and I was on the lookout for every opportunity 
of realizing those convictions. I was bent upon making the 
Government the most efficient possible instrument in help- 
ing the people of the United States to better themselves in 
every way, politically, socially, and industrially. I believed 
with all my heart in real and thoroughgoing democracy, 
and I wished to make this democracy industrial as well as 
political, although I had only partially formulated the meth- 
ods I believed we should follow. I believed in the people's 
rights, and therefore in National rights and States' rights 
just exactly to the degree in which they severally secured 
popular rights. I believed in invoking the National power 
with absolute freedom for every National need ; and I 
believed that the Constitution should be treated as the 
greatest document ever devised by the wit of man to aid a 



THE PRESIDENCY 421 

people in exercising every power necessary for its own better- 
ment, and not as a straitjacket cunningly fashioned to 
strangle growth. As for the particular methods of realiz- 
ing these various beliefs, I was content to wait and see 
what method might be necessary in each given case as it 
arose ; and I was certain that the cases would arise fast 
enough. 

As the time for the Presidential nomination of 1904 drew 
near, it became evident that I was strong with the rank and 
file of the party, but that there was much opposition to me 
among many of the big political leaders, and especially 
among many of the Wall Street men. A group of these 
men met in conference to organize this opposition. It was 
to be done with complete secrecy. But such secrets are 
very hard to keep. I speedily knew all about it, and took 
my measures accordingly. The big men in question, who 
possessed much power so long as they could work under 
cover, or so long as they were merely throwing their weight 
one way or the other between forces fairly evenly balanced, 
were quite helpless when fighting in the open by themselves. 
I never found out that anything practical was even at- 
tempted by most of the men who took part in the confer- 
ence. Three or four of them, however, did attempt 
something. The head of one big business corporation 
attempted to start an eifort to control the delegations from 
New Jersey, North Carolina, and certain Gulf States against 
me. The head of a great railway system made preparations 
for a more ambitious eifort looking towards the control of 
the delegations from Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, 
and California against me. He was a very powerful man 
financially, but his power politically was much more limited, 
and he did not really understand his own limitations or 
the situation itself, whereas I did. He could not have 
secured a delegate against me from Iowa, Nebraska, or 
Kansas. In Colorado and California he could have made a 
fight, but even there I think he would have been completely 
beaten. However, long before the time for the Convention 
came round, it was recognized that it was hopeless to make 
any opposition to my nomination. The effort was aban- 



422 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

doned, and I was nominated unanimously. Judge Parker 
was nominated by the Democrats against me. Practically 
all the metropolitan newspapers of largest circulation were 
against me ; in New York City fifteen out of every sixteen 
copies of papers issued were hostile to me. I won by a 
popular majority of about two million and a half, and in 
the electoral college carried 330 votes against 136. It was 
by far the largest popular majority ever hitherto given any 
Presidential candidate. 

My opponents during the campaign had laid much stress 
upon my supposed personal ambition and intention to use 
the office of President to perpetuate myself in power. I 
did not say anything on the subject prior to the election, 
as I did not wish to say anything that could be construed 
into a promise offered as a consideration in order to secure 
votes. But on election night, after the returns were in I 
issued the following statement: "The wise custom which 
limits the President to two terms regards the substance 
and not the form, and under no circumstances will I be a can- 
didate for or accept another nomination." 

The reason for my choice of the exact phraseology used 
was twofold. In the first place, many of my supporters 
were insisting that, as I had served only three and a half 
years of my first term, coming in from the Vice-Presidency 
when President McKinley was killed, I had really had only 
one elective term, so that the third term custom did not 
apply to me ; and I wished to repudiate this suggestion. 
I believed then (and I believe now) the third term custom 
or tradition to be wholesome, and, therefore, I was deter- 
mined to regard its substance, refusing to quibble over the 
words usually employed to express it. On the other hand, 
I did not wish simply and specifically to say that I would 
not be a candidate for the nomination in 1908, because if 
I had specified the year when I would not be a candidate, it 
would have been widely accepted as meaning that I intended 
to be a candidate some other year; and I had no such inten- 
tion, and had no idea that I would ever be a candidate again. 
Certain newspaper men did ask me if I intended to apply 
my prohibition to 191 2, and I answered that I was not 



THE PRESIDENCY 423 

thinking of 1912, nor of 1920, nor of 1940, and that I must 
decline to say anything whatever except what appeared in 
my statement. 

The Presidency is a great office, and the power of the 
President can be effectively used to secure a renomination, 
especially if the President has the support of certain great 
political and financial interests. It is for this reason, and 
this reason alone, that the wholesome principle of continuing 
in office, so long as he is willing to serve, an incumbent who 
has proved capable, is not applicable to the Presidency. 
Therefore, the American people have wisely established 
a custom against allowing any man to hold that office for 
more than two consecutive terms. But every shred of 
power which a President exercises while in office vanishes 
absolutely when he has once left office. An ex-President 
stands precisely in the position of any other private citizen, 
and has not one particle more power to secure a nomina- 
tion or election than if he had never held the office at all — ■ 
indeed, he probably has less because of the very fact that he 
has held the office. Therefore the reasoning on which the 
anti-third term custom is based has no application whatever 
to an ex-President, and no application whatever to anything 
except consecutive terms. As a barrier of precaution 
against more than two consecutive terms the custom embod- 
ies a valuable principle. Applied in any other way it 
becomes a mere formula, and like all formulas a potential 
source of mischievous confusion. Having this in mind, 
I regarded the custom as applying practically, if not just 
as much, to a President who had been seven and a half 
years in office as to one who had been eight years in office, 
and therefore, in the teeth of a practically unanimous demand 
from my own party that I accept another nomination, and 
the reasonable certainty that the nomination would be 
ratified at the polls, I felt that the substance of the custom 
applied to me in 1908. On the other hand, it had no appli- 
cation whatever to any human being save where it was 
invoked in the case of a man desiring a third consecutive 
term. Having given such substantial proof of my own 
regard for the custom, I deem it a duty to add this comment 



424 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



on it. I believe that it is well to have a custom of this 
kind, to be generally observed, but that it would be very 
unwise to have it definitely hardened into a Constitutional 
prohibition. It is not desirable ordinarily that a man should 
stay in office twelve consecutive years as President ; but 
most certainly the American people are fit to take care 
of themselves, and stand in no need of an irrevocable 

self-denying ordinance. 
They should not bind 
themselves never to 
take action which un- 
der some quite con- 
ceivable circumstances 
it might be to their 
great interest to take. 
It is obviously of the 
last importance to the 
safety of a democracy 
that in time of real 
peril it should be able 
to command the serv- 
ice of every one 
among its citizens in 
the precise position 
cartoon by A. L.Lovey. ^j^^^.^ ^■^^ scrvlcc ren- 
dered will be most val- 




From the Chronicle, Chicago. 

His Favorite Author 

" There was one cartoon made while I was President, Uablc. It WOuld be 3. 
in which I appeared incidentally, that was always a Up„- U^-^rl T-,f->liVi^ i"n 
great favorite of mine. It pictured an old fellow with UclllgllLCU puULy Hi 



event to d 



is- 



chin whiskers, a farmer, in his shirt-sleeves, with his s U C h 

boots off, sitting before the fire, reading the Presi- ^•^ i 1^1 r 

dent's message." quality absolutely from 

the highest office a man 
who while holding it had actually shown the highest ca- 
pacity to exercise its powers with the utmost effect for the 
public defense. If, for instance, a tremendous crisis oc- 
curred at the end of the second term of a man like Lin- 
coln, as such a crisis occurred at the end of his first term, 
it would be a veritable calamity if the American people 
were forbidden to continue to use the services of the 
one man whom they knew, and did not merely guess, 



THE PRESIDENCY 425 

could carry them through the crisis. The third term tradi- 
tion has no value whatever except as it applies to a third 
consecutive term. While it is well to keep it as a cus- 
tom, it would be a mark both of weakness and unwisdom 
for the American people to embody it into a Constitutional 
provision which could not do them good and on some given 
occasion might work real harm. 

There was one cartoon made while I was President, in 
which I appeared incidentally, that was always a great 
favorite of mine. It pictured an old fellow with chin 
whiskers, a farmer, in his shirt-sleeves, with his boots off, 
sitting before the fire, reading the President's Message. 
On his feet were stockings of the kind I have seen hung up 
by the dozen in Joe Ferris's store at Medora, in the days 
when I used to come in to town and sleep in one of the 
rooms over the store. The title of the picture was "His 
Favorite Author." This was the old fellow whom I always 
used to keep in my mind. He had probably been in the 
Civil War in his youth ; he had worked hard ever since he 
left the army; he had been a good husband and father; 
he had brought up his boys and girls to work ; he did not 
wish to do injustice to any one else, but he wanted justice 
done to himself and to others like him ; and I was bound to 
secure that justice for him if it lay in my power to do so.^ 

1 I believe I realized fairly well this ambition. I shall turn to my enemies to 
attest the truth of this statement. The New York Sun, shortly before the National 
Convention of 1904, spoke of me as follows : 

"President Roosevelt holds that his nomination by the National Republican Con- 
vention of 1904 is an assured thing. He makes no concealment of his conviction, 
and it is unreservedly shared by his friends. We think President Roosevelt is 
right. 

"There are strong and convincing reasons why the President should feel that 
success is within his grasp. He has used the opportunities that he found or created, 
and he has used them with consummate skill and undeniable success. 

"The President has disarmed all his enemies. Every weapon they had, new or 
old, has been taken from them and added to the now unassailable Roosevelt arsenal. 
Why should people wonder that Mr. Bryan clings to silver .?_ Has not Mr. Roosevelt 
absorbed and sequestered every vestige of the Kansas City platform that had a 
shred of practical value ? Suppose that Mr. Bryan had been elected President. 
What could he have accomplished compared with what Mr. Roosevelt has accom- 
plished ? Will his most passionate followers pretend for one rnoment that Mr. 
Bryan could have conceived, much less enforced, any such pursuit of the trusts as 
that which Mr. Roosevelt has just brought to a triumphant issue ? Will Mr. 



426 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

Bryan himself intimate that the Federal courts would have turned to his projects 
the friendly countenance which they have lent to those of Mr. Roosevelt ? 

"Where is 'government by injunction' gone to? The very emptiness of that 
once potent phrase is beyond description ! A regiment of Bryans could not com- 
pete with Mr. Roosevelt in harrying the trusts, in bringing wealth to its knees, and 
in converting into the palpable actualities of action the wildest dreams of Bryan's 
campaign orators. He has outdone them all. 

"And how utterly the President has routed the pretensions of Bryan, and of the 
whole Democratic horde in respect to organized labor ! How empty were all their 
professions, their mouthings and their howlings in the face of the simple and un- 
pretentious achievements of the President ! In his own straightforward fashion 
he inflicted upon capital in one short hour of the coal strike a greater humiliation 
than Bryan could have visited upon it in a century. He is the leader of the labor 
unions of the United States. Mr. Roosevelt has put them above the law and above 
the Constitution, because for him they are the American people." [This last, I 
need hardly say, is merely a rhetorical method of saying that I gave the labor union 
precisely the same treatment as the corporation.] 

Senator La Follette, in the issue of his magazine immediately following my leav- 
ing the Presidency in March, 1909, wrote as follows : 

"Roosevelt steps from the stage gracefully. He has ruled his party to a large 
extent against its will. He has played a large part in the world's work, for the past 
seven years. The activities of his remarkably forceful personality have been so 
manifold that it will be long before his true rating will be fixed in the opinion of the 
race. He is said to think that the three great things done by him are the under- 
taking of the construction of the Panama Canal and its rapid and successful carry- 
ing forward, the making of peace between Russia and Japan, and the sending 
around the world of the fleet. 

"These are important things, but many will be slow to think them his greatest 
services. The Panama Canal will surely serve mankind when in operation; and 
the manner of organizing this work seems to be fine. But no one can yet say 
whether this project will be a gigantic success or a gigantic failure; and the task is 
one which must, in the nature of things, have been undertaken and carried through 
some time soon, as historic periods go, anyhow. The Peace of Portsmouth was a 
great thing to be responsible for, and Roosevelt's good offices undoubtedly saved a 
great and bloody battle in Manchuria. But the war was fought out, and the 
parties ready to quit, and there is reason to think that it was only when this situation 
was arrived at that the good offices of the President of the United States were, more 
or less indirectly, invited. The fleet's cruise was a strong piece of diplomacy, by 
which we informed Japan that we will send our fleet wherever we please and when- 
ever we please. It worked out well. 

"But none of these things, it will seem to many, can compare with some of 
Roosevelt's other achievements. Perhaps he is loth to take credit as a reformer, 
for he is prone to spell the word with question marks, and to speak disparingly of 
'reform.' 

"But for all that, this contemner of 'reformers' made reform respectable in the 
United States, and this rebuker of 'muck-rakers' has been the chief agent in making 
the history of 'muck-raking' in the United States a National one, conceded to be 
useful. He has preached from the White House many doctrines; but among them 
he has left impressed on the American mind the one great truth of economic justice 
couched in the pithy and stinging phrase 'the square deal.' The task of making 
reform respectable in a commercialized world, and of giving the Nation a slogan in 
a phrase, is greater than the man who performed it is likely to think. 

"And, then, there is the great and statesmanlike movement for the conservation 



THE PRESIDENCY 427 

of our National resources, into which Roosevelt so energetically threw himself at a 
time when the Nation as a whole knew not that we are ruining and bankrupting 
ourselves as fast as we can. This is probably the greatest thing Roosevelt did, un- 
doubtedly. This globe is the capital stock of the race. It is just so much coal 
and oil and gas. This may be economized or wasted. The same thing is true of 
phosphates and other mineral resources. Our water resources are immense, and 
we are only just beginning to use them. Our forests have been destroyed; they 
must be restored. Our soils are being depleted; they must be built up and con- 
served. 

"These questions are not of this day only or of this generation. They belong 
all to the future. Their consideration requires that high moral tone which regards 
the earth as the home of a posterity to whom we owe a sacred duty. 

"This immense idea Roosevelt, with high statesmanship, dinned into the ears 
of the Nation until the Nation heeded. He held it so high that it attracted the at- 
tention of the neighboring nations of the continent, and will so spread and intensify 
that we will soon see the world's conferences devoted to it. 

"Nothing can be greater or finer than this. It is so great and so fine that when 
the historian of the future shall speak of Theodore Roosevelt he is likely to say 
that he did many notable things, among them that of inaugurating the movement 
which finally resulted in the square deal, but that his greatest work was inspiring and 
actually beginning a world movement for staying terrestrial waste and saving for 
the human race the things upon which, and upon which alone, a great and peaceful 
and progressive and happy race life can be founded. 

"What statesman in all history has done anything calling for so wide a view and 
for a purpose more lofty .'"' 



CHAPTER XI 

THE NATURAL RESOURCES OF THE NATION 

WHEN Governor of New York, as I have already 
described, I had been in consultation with Gifford 
Pinchot and F. H. Newell, and had shaped my 
recommendations about forestry largely in ac- 
cordance with their suggestions. Like other men who had 
thought about the national future at all, I had been growing 
more and more concerned over the destruction of the forests. 
While I had lived in the West I had come to realize the 
vital need of irrigation to the country, and I had been both 
amused and irritated by the attitude of Eastern men who 
obtained from Congress grants of National money to de- 
velop harbors and yet fought the use of the Nation's power 
to develop the irrigation work of the West. Major John 
Wesley Powell, the explorer of the Grand Caiion, and 
Director of the Geological Survey, was the first man who 
fought for irrigation, and he lived to see the Reclamation 
Act passed and construction actually begun. Mr. F. H. 
Newell, the present Director of the Reclamation Service, 
began his work as an assistant hydraulic engineer under 
Major Powell ; and, unlike Powell, he appreciated the need 
of saving the forests and the soil as well as the need of irri- 
gation. Between Powell and Newell came, as Director of 
the Geological Survey, Charles D. Walcott, who, after 
the Reclamation Act was passed, by his force, pertinacity, 
and tact, succeeded in putting the act into effect in the best 
possible manner. Senator Francis G. Newlands, of Nevada, 
fought hard for the cause of reclamation in Congress. He 
attempted to get his State to act, and when that proved 
hopeless to get the Nation to act ; and was ably assisted by 
Mr. G. H. Maxwell, a Californian, who had taken a deep 
interest in irrigation matters. Dr. W J McGee was one 

428 



THE NATURAL RESOURCES OF THE NATION 429 

of the leaders in all the later stages of the movement. But 
Gifford Pinchot is the man to whom the nation owes most 
for what has been accomplished as regards the preserva- 
tioi' of the natural resources of our country. He led, and 
indeed during its most vital period embodied, the fight for 
the preservation through use of our forests. He played one 
of the leading parts in the effort to make the National 
Government the chief instrument in developing the irrigation 
of the arid West. He was the foremost leader in the great 
struggle to coordinate all our social and governmental 
forces in the effort to secure the adoption of a rational and 
farseeing policy for securing the conservation of all our 
national resources. He was already in the Government 
service as head of the Forestry Bureau when I became Presi- 
dent ; he continued throughout my term, not only as head 
of the Forest service, but as the moving and directing spirit 
in most of the conservation work, and as counsellor and 
assistant on most of the other work connected with the 
internal affairs of the country. Taking into account the 
varied nature of the work he did, its vital importance to the 
nation and the fact that as regards much of it he was practi- 
cally breaking new ground, and taking into account also 
his tireless energy and activity, his fearlessness, his complete 
disinterestedness, his single-minded devotion to the interests 
of the plain people, and his extraordinary efficiency, I 
believe it is but just to say that among the many, many 
public officials who under my administration rendered 
literally invaluable service to the people of the United 
States, he, on the whole, stood first. A few months after 
I left the Presidency he was removed from office by President 
Taft. 

The first work I took up when I became President was the 
work of reclamation. Immediately after I had come to 
Washington, after the assassination of President McKinley, 
while staying at the house of my sister, Mrs. Cowles, before 
going into the White House, Newell and Pinchot called upon 
me and laid before me their plans for National irrigation of 
the arid lands of the West, and for the consolidation of the 
forest work of the Government in the Bureau of Forestry. 



430 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

At that time a narrowly legalistic point of view toward 
natural resources obtained in the Departments, and con- 
trolled the Governmental administrative machinery. 
Through the General Land Office and other Governnient 
bureaus, the public resources were being handled ana 
disposed of in accordance with the small considerations 
of petty legal formalities, instead of for the large 
purposes of constructive development, and the habit of 
deciding, whenever possible, in favor of private interests 
against the public welfare was firmly fixed. It was as little 
customary to favor the bona-fide settler and home builder, 
as against the strict construction of the law, as it was to use 
the law in thwarting the operations of the land grabbers. A 
technical compliance with the letter of the law was all that 
was required. 

The idea that our natural resources were inexhaustible 
still obtained, and there was as yet no real knowledge of 
their extent and condition. The relation of the conservation 
of natural resources to the problems of National welfare and 
National efficiency had not yet dawned on the public mind. 
The reclamation of arid public lands in the West was still a 
matter for private enterprise alone; and our magnificent 
river system, with its superb possibilities for public usefulness, 
was dealt with by the National Government not as a unit, 
but as a disconnected series of pork-barrel problems, whose 
only real interest was in their effect on the reelection or 
defeat of a Congressman here and there — a theory which, 
I regret to say, still obtains. 

The place of the farmer in the National economy was still 
regarded solely as that of a grower of food to be eaten by 
others, while the human needs and interests of himself and 
his wife and children still remained wholly outside the recog- 
nition of the Government. 

All the forests which belonged to the United States were 
held and administered in one Department, and all the forest- 
ers in Government employ were in another Department. 
Forests and foresters had nothing whatever to do with each 
other. The National Forests in the West (then called forest 
reserves) were wholly inadequate in area to meet the purposes 



THE NATURAL RESOURCES OF THE NATION 431 

for which they were created, while the need for forest protec- 
tion in the East had not yet begun to enter the public mind. 

Such was the condition of things when Newell and Pin- 
chot called on me. I was a warm believer in reclamation 
and in forestry, and, after listening to my two guests, I 
asked them to prepare material on the subject for me to use 
in my first message to Congress, of December 3, 1901. 
This message laid the foundation for the development of 
irrigation and forestry during the next seven and one-half 
years. It set forth the new attitude toward the natural 
resources in the words : "The Forest and water problems 
are perhaps the most vital internal problems of the United 
States." 

On the day the message was read, a committee of Western 
Senators and Congressmen was organized to prepare a Rec- 
lamation Bill in accordance with the recommendations. 
By far the most effective of the Senators in drafting and 
pushing the bill, which became known by his name, was 
Newlands. The draft of the bill was worked over by me and 
others at several conferences and revised in important 
particulars ; my active interference was necessary to pre- 
"«^ent it from being made unworkable by an undue insistence 
upon States Rights, in accordance with the efforts of Mr. 
Mondell and other Congressmen, who consistently fought 
for local and private interests as against the interests of 
the people as a whole. 

On June 17, 1902, the Reclamation Act was passed. It 
set aside the proceeds of the disposal of public lands for the 
purpose of reclaiming the waste areas of the arid West by 
irrigating lands otherwise worthless, and thus creating new 
homes upon the land. The money so appropriated was to be 
repaid to the Government by the settlers, and to be used 
again as a revolving fund continuously available for the work. 

The impatience of the Western people to see immediate 
results from the Reclamation Act was so great that red tape 
was disregarded, and the work was pushed forward at a 
rate previously unknown in Government affairs. Later, 
as in almost all such cases, there followed the criticisms of 
alleged illegality and haste which are so easy to make after 



432 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

results have been accomplished and the need for the measures 
without which nothing could have been done has gone by. 
These criticisms were in character precisely the same as that 
made about the acquisition of Panama, the settlement of 
the anthracite coal strike, the suits against the big trusts, 
the stopping of the panic of 1907 by the action of the 
Executive concerning the Tennessee Coal and Iron Com- 
pany ; and, in short, about most of the best work done 
during my administration. 

With the Reclamation work, as with much other work 
under me, the men in charge were given to understand that 
they must get into the water if they would learn to swim ; 
and, furthermore, they learned to know that if they acted 
honestly, and boldly and fearlessly accepted responsibility, 
I would stand by them to the limit. In this, as in every 
other case, in the end the boldness of the action fully 
justified itself. 

Every item of the whole great plan of Reclamation now in 
effect was undertaken between 1902 and 1906. By the 
spring of 1909 the work was an assured success, and the 
Government had become fully committed to its continuance. 
The work of Reclamation was at first under the United 
States Geological Survey, of which Charles D. Walcott was 
at that time Director. In the spring of 1908 the United 
States Reclamation Service was established to carry it on, 
under the direction of Frederick Hayes Newell, to whom the 
inception of the plan was due. Newell's single-minded 
devotion to this great task, the constructive imagination 
which enabled him to conceive it, and the executive power 
and high character through which he and his assistant, 
Arthur P. Davis, built up a model service — all these have 
made him a model servant. The final proof of his merit 
is supplied by the character and records of the men who later 
assailed him. 

Although the gross expenditure under the Reclamation 
Act is not yet as large as that for the Panama Canal, the 
engineering obstacles to be overcome have been almost as 
great, and the political impediments many times greater. 
The Reclamation work had to be carried on at widely sepa- 



434 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

rated points, remote from railroads, under the most difficult 
pioneer conditions. The twenty-eight projects begun in 
the years 1902 to 1906 contemplated the irrigation of more 
than three million acres and the watering of more than thirty 
thousand farms. Many of the dams required for this huge 
task are higher than any previously built anywhere in 
the world. They feed main-line canals over seven thousand 
miles in total length, and involve minor constructions, such as 
culverts and bridges, tens of thousands in number. 

What the Reclamation Act has done for the country is by 
no means limited to its material accomplishment. This Act 
and the results flowing from it have helped powerfully to 
prove to the Nation that it can handle its own resources and 
exercise direct and business-like control over them. The 
population which the Reclamation Act has brought into the 
arid West, while comparatively small when compared with 
that in the more closely inhabited East, has been a 
most effective contribution to the National life, for it 
has gone far to transform the social aspect of the West, 
making for the stability of the institutions upon which 
the welfare of the whole country rests : it has substituted 
actual homemakers, who have settled on the land with their 
families, for huge, migratory bands of sheep herded by the 
hired shepherds of absentee owners. 

The recent attacks on the Reclamation Service, and on 
Mr. Newell, arise in large part, if not altogether, from an 
organized effort to repudiate the obligation of the settlers to 
repay the Government for what it has expended to reclaim 
the land. The repudiation of any debt can always find 
supporters, and in this case it has attracted the support 
not only of certain men among the settlers who hope to be 
relieved of paying what they owe, but also of a variety of 
unscrupulous politicians, some highly placed. It is unlikely 
that their efforts to deprive the West of the revolving Ir- 
rigation fund will succeed in doing anything but discredit- 
ing these politicians in the sight of all honest men. 

When in the spring of 191 1 I visited the Roosevelt Dam 
in Aritona, and opened the reservoir, I made a short speech 
to the assembled people. Among other things, I said to the 



THE NATURAL RESOURCES OF THE NATION 435 

engineers present that in the name of all good citizens I 
thanked them for their admirable work, as efficient as it was 
honest, and conducted according to the highest standards of 
public service. As I looked at the fine, strong, eager faces 
of those of the force who were present, and thought of the 
similar men in the service, in the higher positions, who were 
absent, and who were no less responsible for the work done, 
I felt a foreboding that they would never receive any real 
recognition for their achievement; and, only half humor- 
ously, I warned them not to expect any credit, or any satis- 
faction, except their own knowledge that they had done 
well a first-class job, for that probably the only attention 
Congress would ever pay them would be to investigate 
them. Well, a year later a Congressional Committee 
actually did investigate them. The investigation was 
instigated by some unscrupulous local politicians and by 
some settlers who wished to be relieved from paying their 
just obligations ; and the members of the Committee joined 
in the attack on as fine and honorable a set of public servants 
as the Government has ever had ; an attack made on them 
solely because they were honorable and efficient and loyal 
to the interests both of the Government and the settlers. 

When I became President, the Bureau of Forestry (since 
1905 the United States Forest Service) was a small 
but growing organization, under Giiford Pinchot, occupied 
mainly with laying the foundation of American forestry by 
scientific study of the forests, and with the promotion of 
forestry on private lands. It contained all the trained 
foresters in the Government service, but had charge of no 
public timberland whatsoever. The Government forest 
reserves of that day were in the care of a Division in the 
General Land Office, under the management of clerks 
wholly without knowledge of forestry, few if any of whom had 
ever seen a foot of the timberlands for which they were re- 
sponsible. Thus the reserves were neither well protected 
nor well used. There were no foresters among the men who 
had charge of the National Forests, and no Government 
forests in charge of the Government foresters. 

In my first message to Congress I strongly recommended 



436 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

the consolidation of the forest work in the hands of the 
trained men of the Bureau of Forestry. This recom- 
mendation was repeated in other messages, but Congress 
did not give effect to it until three years later. In the mean- 
time, by thorough study of the Western public timberlands, 
the groundwork was laid for the responsibilities which were 
to fall upon the Bureau of Forestry when the care of the 
National Forests came to be transferred to it. It was evident 
that trained American Foresters would be needed in con- 
siderable numbers, and a forest school was established at 
Yale to supply them. 

In 1901, at my suggestion as President, the Secretary of 
the Interior, Mr. Hitchcock, made a formal request for 
technical advice from the Bureau of Forestry in handling 
the National Forests, and an extensive examination of their 
condition and needs was accordingly taken up. The same 
year a study was begun of the proposed Appalachian Na- 
tional Forest, the plan of which, already formulated at that 
time, has since been carried out. A year later experimental 
planting on the National Forests was also begun, and studies 
preparatory to the application of practical forestry to the 
Indian Reservations were undertaken. In 1903, so rapidly 
did the public work of the Bureau of Forestry increase, 
that the examination of land for new forest reserves was 
added to the study of those already created, the forest 
lands of the various States were studied, and cooperation 
with several of them in the examination and handling of 
their forest lands was undertaken. While these practical 
tasks were pushed forward, a technical knowledge of Ameri- 
can Forests was rapidly accumulated. The special knowl- 
edge gained was made public in printed bulletins ; and at the 
same time the Bureau undertook, through the newspaper 
and periodical press, to make all the people of the United 
States acquainted with the needs and the purposes of practi- 
cal forestry. It is doubtful whether there has ever been 
elsewhere under the Government such effective publicity — 
publicity purely in the interest of the people — at so low a 
cost. Before the educational work of the Forest Service 
was stopped by the Taft Administration, it was securing the 



THE NATURAL RESOURCES OF THE NATION 437 

publication of facts about forestry in fifty million copies of 
newspapers a month at a total expense of ^6000 a year. 
Not one cent has ever been paid by the Forest Service to any 
publication of any kind for the printing of this material. 
It was given out freely, and published without cost because 
it was news. Without this publicity the Forest Service 
could not have survived the attacks made upon it by the 
representatives of the great special interests in Congress ; 
nor could forestry in America have made the rapid progress 
it has. 

The result of all the work outlined above was to bring 
together in the Bureau of Forestry, by the end of 1904, the 
only body of forest experts under the Government, and 
practically all of the first-hand information about the public 
forests which was then in existence. In 1905, the obvious 
foolishness of continuing to separate the foresters and the 
forests, reenforced by the action of the First National Forest 
Congress, held in Washington, brought about the Act of 
February i, 1905, which transferred the National Forests 
from the care of the Interior Department to the Department 
of Agriculture, and resulted in the creation of the present 
United States Forest Service. 

The men upon whom the responsibility of handling some 
sixty million acres of National Forest lands was thus thrown 
were ready for the work, both in the office and in the field, 
because they had been preparing for it for more than five 
years. Without delay they proceeded, under the leadership 
of Pinchot, to apply to the new work the principles they had 
already formulated. One of these was to open all the 
resources of the National Forests to regulated use. Another 
was that of putting every part of the land to that use in 
which it would best serve the public. Following this 
principle, the Act of June 11, 1906, was drawn, and its 
passage was secured from Congress. This law throws 
open to settlement all land in the National Forests that is 
found, on examination, to be chiefly valuable for agriculture. 
Hitherto all such land had been closed to the settler. 

The principles thus formulated and applied may be 
summed up in the statement that the rights of the public 



438 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

to the natural resources outweigh private rights, and must 
be given its first consideration. Until that time, in deaHng 
with the National Forests, and the public lands generally, 
private rights had almost uniformly been allowed to over- 
balance public rights. The change we made was right, 
and was vitally necessary; but, of course, it created bitter 
opposition from private interests. 

One of the principles whose application was the source 
of much hostility was this : It is better for the Government to 
help a poor man to make a living for his family than to help 
a rich man make more profit for his company. This prin- 
ciple was too sound to be fought openly. It is the kind of 
principle to which politicians delight to pay unctuous homage 
in words. But we translated the words into deeds ; and when 
they found that this was the case, many rich men, especially 
sheep owners, were stirred to hostility, and they used the 
Congressmen they controlled to assault us — getting most 
aid from certain demagogues, who were equally glad im- 
properly to denounce rich men in public and improperly to 
serve them in private. The Forest Service established and 
enforced regulations which favored the settler as against the 
large stock owner ; required that necessary reductions in the 
stock grazed on any National Forest should bear first on the 
big man, before the few head of the small man, upon which 
the living of his family depended, were reduced ; and made 
grazing in the National Forests a help, instead of a hindrance, 
to permanent settlement. As a result, the small settlers 
and their families became, on the whole, the best friends 
the Forest Service has ; although in places their ignorance 
was played on by demagogues to influence them against the 
policy that was primarily for their own interest. 

Another principle which led to the bitterest antagonism of 
all was this — whoever (except a bona-fide settler) takes 
public property for private profit should pay for what he 
gets. In the effort to apply this principle, the Forest 
Service obtained a decision from the Attorney-General that 
it was legal to make the men who grazed sheep and cattle 
on the National Forests pay for what they got. Accordingly, 
in the summer of 1906, for the first time, such a charge was 



THE NATURAL RESOURCES OF THE NATION 439 

made ; and, In the face of the bitterest opposition, It was 
collected. 

Up to the time the National Forests were put under the 
charge of the Forest Service, the Interior Department had 
made no effort to establish public regulation and control of 
water powers. Upon the transfer, the Service Immediately 
began Its fight to handle the power resources of the National 
Forests so as to prevent speculation and monopoly and to 
yield a fair return to the Government, On May i, 1906, 
an Act was passed granting the use of certain power sites 
In Southern California to the Edison Electric Power Com- 
pany, which Act, at the suggestion of the Service, limited 
the period of the permit to forty years, and required the 
payment of an annual rental by the company, the same 
conditions which were thereafter adopted by the Service as 
the basis for all permits for power development. Then 
began a vigorous fight against the position of the Service 
by the water-power Interests, The right to charge for 
water-power development was, however, sustained by the 
Attorney-General, 

In 1907, the area of the National Forests was Increased 
by Presidential proclamation more than forty-three million 
acres ; the plant necessary for the full use of the Forests, 
such as roads, trails, and telephone lines, began to be pro- 
vided on a large scale ; the Interchange of field and office 
men, so as to prevent the antagonism between them, which 
Is so destructive of efficiency in most great businesses, was 
established as a permanent policy; and the really effective 
management of the enormous area of the National Forests 
began to be secured. 

With all this activity In the field, the progress of technical 
forestry and popular education was not neglected. In 
1907, for example, sixty-one publications on various phases of 
forestry, with a total of more than .a million copies, were 
Issued, as against three publications, with a total of eighty- 
two thousand copies. In 1901. By this time, also, the oppo- 
sition of the servants of the special Interests In Congress to 
the Forest Service had become strongly developed, and more 
time appeared to be spent In the yearly attacks upon It 



440 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

during the passage of the appropriation bills than on all 
other Government Bureaus put together. Every year the 
Forest Service had to fight for its life. 

One incident in these attacks is worth recording. While 
the Agricultural Appropriation Bill was passing through 
the Senate, in 1907, Senator Fulton, of Oregon, secured 
an amendment providing that the President could not set 
aside any additional National Forests in the six Northwestern 
States. This meant retaining some sixteen million of acres 
to be exploited by land grabbers and by the representatives 
of the great special interests, at the expense of the public 
interest. But for four years the Forest Service had been 
gathering field notes as to what forests ought to be set aside 
in these States, and so was prepared to act. It was equally 
undesirable to veto the whole agricultural bill, and to sign 
it with this amendment effective. Accordingly, a plan to 
create the necessary National Forest in these States before 
the Agricultural Bill could be passed and signed was laid 
before me by Mr. Pinchot. I approved it. The necessary 
papers were immediately prepared. I signed the last 
proclamation a couple of days before, by my signature, 
the bill became law ; and, when the friends of the special 
interests in the Senate got their amendment through 
and woke up, they discovered that sixteen million acres 
of timberland had been saved for the people by putting 
them in the National Forests before the land grabbers 
could get at them. The opponents of the Forest Service 
turned handsprings in their wrath ; and dire were their 
threats against the Executive ; but the threats could not be 
carried out, and were really only a tribute to the efficiency 
of our action. 

By 1908, the fire prevention work of the Forest Service 
had become so successful that eighty-six per cent of the fires 
that did occur were held down to an area of five acres or 
less, and the timber sales, which yielded $60,000 in 1905, in 
1908 produced $850,000. In the same year, in addition to 
the work on the National Forests, the responsibility for 
the proper handling of Indian timberlands was laid upon the 
Forest Service, where it remained with great benefit to the 



THE NATURAL RESOURCES OF THE NATION 441 

Indians until it was withdrawn, as a part of the attack on 
the Conservation policy made after I left office. 

By March 4, 1909, nearly half a million acres of agri- 
cultural land in the National Forests had been opened to 
settlement under the Act of June 11, 1906. The business 
management of the Forest Service became so excellent, 
thanks to the remarkable executive capacity of the Associate 
Forester, Overton W. Price (removed after I left office), 
that it was declared by a well-known firm of business or- 
ganizers to compare favorably with the best managed of the 
great private corporations, an opinion which was confirmed 
by the report of a Congressional investigation, and by the 
report of the Presidential Committee on Department method. 
The area of the National Forests had increased from 43 to 
194 million acres ; the force from about 500 to more than 
3000. There was saved for public use in the National 
Forests more Government timberland during the seven and 
a half years prior to March 4, 1909, than during all previous 
and succeeding years put together. 

The idea that the Executive is the steward of the public 
welfare was first formulated and given practical effect in 
the Forest Service by its law officer, George Woodruff. 
The laws were often insufficient, and it became well nigh 
impossible to get them amended in the public interest when 
once the representatives of privilege in Congress grasped 
the fact that I would sign no amendment that contained 
anything not in the public interest. It was necessary to 
use what law was already in existence, and then further to 
supplement it by Executive action. The practice of examin- 
ing every claim to public land before passing it into private 
ownership offers a good example of the policy in question. 
This practice, which has since become general, was first 
applied in the National Forests. Enormous areas of valu- 
able public timberland were thereby saved from fraudulent 
acquisition; more than 250,000 acres were thus saved in a 
single case. 

This theory of stewardship in the interest of the public 
was well illustrated by the establishment of a water-power 
policy. Until the Forest Service changed the plan, water- 



THE NATURAL RESOURCES OF THE NATION 443 

powers on the navigable streams, on the public domain, 
and in the National Forests were given away for nothing, 
and substantially without question, to whoever asked for 
them. At last, under the principle that public property 
should be paid for and should not be permanently granted 
away when such permanent grant is avoidable, the Forest 
Service established the policy of regulating the use of power in 
the National Forests in the public interest and making a 
charge for value received. This was the beginning of the 
water-power policy now substantially accepted by the public, 
and doubtless soon to be enacted into law. But there was 
at the outset violent opposition to it on the part of the 
water-power companies, and such representatives of their 
views in Congress as Messrs. Tawney and Bede. 

Many bills were introduced in Congress aimed, in one way 
or another, at relieving the power companies of control and 
payment. When these bills reached me I refused to sign 
them; and the injury to the public interest which would 
follow their passage was brought sharply to public attention 
in my message of February 26, 1908. The bills made no 
further progress. 

Under the same principle of stewardship, railroads and 
other corporations, which applied for and were given rights 
in the National Forests, were regulated in the use of those 
rights. In short, the public resources in charge of the For- 
est Service were handled frankly and openly for the public 
welfare under the clear-cut and clearly set forth principle 
that the public rights come first and private interest second. 

The natural result of this new attitude was the assertion 
in every form by the representatives of special interests that 
the Forest Service was exceeding its legal powers and 
thwarting the intention of Congress. Suits were begun 
wherever the chance arose. It is worth recording that, 
in spite of the novelty and complexity of the legal questions 
it had to face, no court of last resort has ever decided against 
the Forest Service. This statement includes two unani- 
mous decisions by the Supreme Court of the United States 
(U. S. vs. Grimaud, 220 U. S., 506, and Light vs. U. S., 220 
U. S., 523). 



444 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

In its administration of the National Forests, the Forest 
Service found that valuable coal lands were in danger of 
passing into private ownership without adequate money 
return to the Government and without safeguard against 
monopoly ; and that existing legislation was insufficient 
to prevent this. When this condition was brought to my 
attention I withdrew from all forms of entry about sixty- 
eight million acres of coal land in the United States, including 
Alaska. The refusal of Congress to act in the public interest 
was solely responsible for keeping these lands from entry. 

The Conservation movement was a direct outgrowth of 
the forest movement. It was nothing more than the appli- 
cation to our other natural resources of the principles which 
had been worked out in connection with the forests. Without 
the basis of public sentiment which had been built up for 
the protection of the forests, and without the example of 
public foresight in the protection of this, one of the great 
natural resources, the Conservation movement would have 
been impossible. The first formal step was the creation 
of the Inland Waterways Commission, appointed on March 
14, 1907. In my letter appointing the Commission, I 
called attention to the value of our streams as great natural 
resources, and to the need for a progressive plan for their 
development and control, and said: "It is not possible to 
properly frame so large a plan as this for the control of our 
rivers without taking account of the orderly development 
of other natural resources. Therefore I ask that the Inland 
Waterways Commission shall consider the relations of the 
streams to the use of all the great permanent natural re- 
sources and their conservation for the making and main- 
tenance of prosperous homes." 

Over a year later, writing on the report of the Commission, 
I said : 

"The preliminary Report of the Inland Waterways 
Commission was excellent in every way. It outlines a 
general plan of waterway improvement which when adopted 
will give assurance that the improvements will yield practical 
results in the way of increased navigation and water transpor- 
tation. In every essential feature the plan recommended 



THE NATURAL RESOURCES OF THE NATION 445 

by the Commission is new. In the principle of coordinating 
all uses of the waters and treating each waterway system 
as a unit ; in the principle of correlating water traffic with 
rail and other land traffic ; in the principle of expert initia- 
tion of projects in accordance with commercial foresight 
and the needs of a growing country ; and in the principle of 
cooperation between the States and the Federal Government 
in the administration and use of waterways, etc. ; the general 
plan proposed by the Commission is new, and at the same 
time sane and simple. The plan deserves unqualified 
support. I regret that it has not yet been adopted by Con- 
gress, but I am confident that ultimately it will be adopted." 

The most striking incident in the history of the Commis- 
sion was the trip down the Mississippi River in October, 
1907, when, as President of the United States, I was the 
chief guest. This excursion, with the meetings which were 
held and the wide public attention it attracted, gave the 
development of our inland waterways a new standing in 
public estimation. During the trip a letter was prepared 
and presented to me asking me to summon a conference 
on the conservation of natural resources. My intention 
to call such a conference was publicly announced at a great 
meeting at Memphis, Tenn. 

In the November following I wrote to each of the Governors 
of the several States and to the Presidents of various impor- 
tant National Societies concerned with natural resources, 
inviting them to attend the conference, which took place 
May 13 to 15, 1908, in the East Room of the White House. 
It is doubtful whether, except in time of war, any new idea 
of like importance has ever been presented to a Nation 
and accepted by it with such eflPectiveness and rapidity, as 
was the case with this Conservation movement when it was 
introduced to the American people by the Conference of 
Governors. The first result was the unanimous declaration 
of the Governors of all the States and Territories upon the 
subject of Conservation, a document which ought to be hung 
in every schoolhouse throughout the land. A further 
result was the appointment of thirty-six State Conservation 
Commissions and, on June 8, 1908, of the National Conser- 




Copyright by Underwood and Underwood. 

Down the Mississippi. 



THE NATURAL RESOURCES OF THE NATION 447 

vation Commission. The task of this Commission was to 
prepare an inventory, the first ever made for any nation, 
of all the natural resources which underlay its property. 
The making of this inventory was made possible by an 
Executive order which placed the resources of the Govern- 
ment Departments at the command of the Commission, and 
made possible the organization of subsidiary committees by 
which the actual facts for the inventory were prepared and 
digested. Giiford Pinchot was made chairman of the Com- 
mission. 

The report of the National Conservation Commission 
was not only the first inventory of our resources, but was 
unique in the history of Government in the amount and 
variety of information brought together. It was completed 
in six months. It laid squarely before the American people 
the essential facts regarding our natural resources, when 
facts were greatly needed as the basis for constructive action. 
This report was presented to the Joint Conservation Con- 
gress in December, at which there were present Governors of 
twenty States, representatives of twenty-two State Con- 
servation Commissions, and representatives of sixty National 
organizations previously represented at the White Plouse 
conference. The report was unanimously approved, and 
transmitted to me, January 11, 1909. On January 22, 1909, 
I transmitted the report of the National Conservation Com- 
mission to Congress with a Special Message, in which it 
was accurately described as "one of the most fundamentally 
important documents ever laid before the American people." 

The Joint Conservation Conference of December, 1908, 
suggested to me the practicability of holding a North 
American Conservation Conference. I selected Gifford 
Pinchot to convey this invitation in person to Lord Grey, 
Governor General of Canada ; to Sir Wilfrid Laurier ; and 
to President Diaz of Mexico ; giving as reason for my 
action, in the letter in which this invitation was conveyed, 
the fact that: "It is evident that natural resources are not 
limited by the boundary lines which separate nations, and 
that the need for conserving them upon this continent is 
as wide as the area upon which they exist." 



448 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

In response to this invitation, which included the colony 
of Newfoundland, the Commissioners assembled in the 
White House on February i8, 1909. The American Com- 
missioners were Gifford Pinchot, Robert Bacon, and James 
R. Garfield. After a session continuing through five days, 
the Conference united in a declaration of principles, and 
suggested to the President of the United States "that all 
nations should be invited to join together in conference 
on the subject of world resources, and their inventory, 
conservation, and wise utilization," Accordingly, on Febru- 
ary 19, 1909, Robert Bacon, Secretary of State, addressed 
to forty-five nations a letter of invitation "to send delegates 
to a conference to be held at The Hague at such date to be 
found convenient, there to meet and consult the like delegates 
of the other countries, with a view of considering a general 
plan for an inventory of the natural resources of the world 
and to devising a uniform scheme for the expression of the 
results of such inventory, to the end that there may be a 
general understanding and appreciation of the world's 
supply of the material elements which underlie the develop- 
ment of civilization and the welfare of the peoples of the 
earth." After I left the White House the project lapsed. 

Throughout the early part of my Administration the 
public land policy was chiefly directed to the defense of the 
public lands against fraud and theft. Secretary Hitchcock's 
eflForts along this line resulted in the Oregon land fraud cases, 
which led to the conviction of Senator Mitchell, and which 
made Francis J. Heney known to the American people 
as one of their best and most effective servants. 
These land fraud prosecutions under Mr. Heney, together 
with the study of the public lands which preceded the passage 
of the Reclamation Act in 1902, and the investigation of 
land titles in the National Forests by the Forest Service, 
all combined to create a clearer understanding of the need of 
land law reform, and thus led to the appointment of the 
Public Lands Commission. This Commission, appointed 
by me on October 22, 1903, was directed to report to the 
President: "Upon the condition, operation, and effect of 
the present land laws, and to recommend such changes 



THE NATURAL RESOURCES OF THE NATION 449 

as are needed to effect the largest practicable disposition 
of the public lands to actual settlers who will build per- 
manent homes upon them, and to secure in permanence the 
fullest and most effective use of the resources of the public 
lands." It proceeded without loss of time to make a per- 
sonal study on the ground of public land problems through- 
out the West, to confer with the Governors and other public 
men most concerned, and to assemble the information con- 
cerning the public lands, the laws and decisions which 
governed them, and the methods of defeating or evading 
those laws, which was already in existence, but which re- 
mained unformulated in the records of the General Land 
Office and in the minds of its employees. The Public Lands 
Commission made its first preliminary report on March 7, 
1904. It found "that the present land laws do not fit the 
conditions of the remaining public lands," and recommended 
specific changes to meet the public needs. A year later the 
second report of the Commission recommended still further 
changes, and said "The fundamental fact that characterizes 
the situation under the present land laws is this, that the 
number of patents issued is increasing out of all proportion 
to the number of new homes." This report laid the founda- 
tion of the movement for Government control of the open 
range, and included by far the most complete statement 
ever made of the disposition of the public domain. 

Among the most difficult topics considered by the Public 
Land Commission was that of the mineral land laws. This 
subject was referred by the Commission to the American 
Institute of Mining Engineers, which reported upon it 
through a Committee. This Committee made the very 
important recommendation, among others, "that the Govern- 
ment of the United States should retain title to all minerals, 
including coal and oil, in the lands of unceded territory, 
and lease the same to individuals or corporations at a fixed 
rental." The necessity for this action has since come to be 
very generally recognized. Another recommendation, since 
partly carried into effect, was for the separation of the 
surface and the minerals in lands containing coal and oil. 

Our land laws have of recent years proved inefficient ; yet 


















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'^'^X 







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THE NATURAL RESOURCES OF THE NATION 451 

the land laws themselves have not been so much to blame 
as the lax, unintelligent, and often corrupt administration 
of these laws. The appointment on March 4, 1907, of James 
R. Garfield as Secretary of the Interior led to a new era in 
the interpretation and enforcement of the laws governing 
the public lands. His administration of the Interior De- 
partment was beyond comparison the best we have ever had. 
It was based primarily on the conception that it is as much 
the duty of public land officials to help the honest settler 
get title to his claim as it is to prevent the looting of the 
public lands. The essential fact about public land frauds 
is not merely that public property is stolen, but that every 
claim fraudulently acquired stands in the way of the making 
of a home or a livelihood by an honest man. 

As the study of the public land laws proceeded and their 
administration improved, a public land policy was formu»- 
lated in which the saving of the resources on the public do- 
main for public use became the leading principle. There 
followed the withdrawal of coal lands as already described, 
of oil lands and phosphate lands, and finally, just at the 
end of the Administration, of water-power sites on the public 
domain. These withdrawals were made by the Executive in 
order to afford to Congress the necessary opportunity to 
pass wise laws dealing with their use and disposal ; and the 
great crooked special interests fought them with incredible 
bitterness. 

Among the men of this Nation interested in the vital 
problems affecting the welfare of the ordinary hard-working 
men and women of the Nation, there is none whose interest 
has been more intense, and more wholly free from taint of 
thought of self, than that of Thomas Watson, of Georgia. 
While President I often discussed with him the condition 
of women on the small farms, and on the frontier, the hard- 
ship of their lives as compared with those of the men, and 
the need for taking their welfare into consideration in what- 
ever was done for the improvement of life on the land. I 
also went over the matter with C. S. Barrett, of Georgia, a 
leader in the Southern farmers' movement, and with other 
men, such as Henry Wallace, Dean L. H. Bailey, of Cornell, 



452 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

and Kenyon Butterfield. One man from whose advice I 
especially profited was not an American, but an Irishman, 
Sir Horace Plunkett. In various conversations he described 
to me and my close associates the reconstruction of farm 
life which had been accomplished by the Agricultural Organ- 
ization Society of Ireland, of which he was the founder and 
the controlling force ; and he discussed the application of 
similar methods to the improvements of farm life in the 
United States. In the spring of 1908, at my request, 
Plunkett conferred on the subject with Garfield and Pinchot, 
and the latter suggested to him the appointment of a Com- 
mission on Country Life as a means for directing the atten- 
tion of the Nation to the problems of the farm, and for 
securing the necessary knowledge of the actual conditions 
of life in the open country. After long discussion a plan for a 
Country Life Commission was laid before me and approved. 
The appointment of the Commission followed in August, 
1908. In the letter of appointment the reasons for creating 
the Commission were set forth as follows : "I doubt if any 
other nation can bear comparison with our own In the 
amount of attention given by the Government, both Federal 
and State, to agricultural matters. But practically the 
whole of this effort has hitherto been directed toward increas- 
ing the production of crops. Our attention has been concen- 
trated almost exclusively on getting better farming. In 
the beginning this was unquestionably the right thing to 
do. The farmer must first of all grow good crops in order to 
support himself and his family. But when this has been 
secured, the effort for better farming should cease to stand 
alone, and should be accompanied by the effort for better 
business and better living on the farm. It is at least as 
important that the farmer should get the largest possible 
return in money, comfort, and social advantages from the 
crops he grows, as that he should get the largest possible 
return in crops from the land he farms. Agriculture is not 
the whole of country life. The great rural interests are 
human Interests, and good crops are of little value to the 
farmer unless they open the door to a good kind of life on 
the farm." 



THE NATURAL RESOURCES OF THE NATION 453 

The Commission on Country Life did worlc of capital 
importance. By means of a widely circulated set of ques- 
tions the Commission informed itself upon the status of 
country life throughout the Nation. Its trip through 
the East, South, and West brought it into contact with 
large numbers of practical farmers and their wives, secured 
for the Commissioners a most valuable body of first-hand 
information, and laid the foundation for the remarkable 
awakening of interest in country life which has since taken 
place throughout the Nation. 

One of the most illuminating — and incidentally one of the 
most interesting and amusing — series of answers sent to 
the Commission was from a farmer In Missouri. He stated 
that he had a wife and 11 living children, he and his wife 
being each 52 years old; and that they owned 520 acres of 
land without any mortgage hanging over their heads. 
He had himself done well, and his views as to why many 
of his neighbors had done less well are entitled to con- 
sideration. These views are expressed in terse and vigorous 
English ; they cannot always be quoted in full. He states 
that the farm homes in his neighborhood are not as good 
as they should be because too many of them are encumbered 
by mortgages ; that the schools do not train boys and 
girls satisfactorily for life on the farm, because they allow 
them to get an idea in their heads that city life is better, 
and that to remedy this practical farming should be taught. 
To the question whether the farmers and their wives in 
his neighborhood are satisfactorily organized, he answers : 
"Oh, there is a little one-horse grange gang in our locality, 
and every darned one thinks they ought to be a king." 
To the question, "Are the renters of farms in your neighbor- 
hood making a satisfactory living.^" he answers: "No; 
because they move about so much hunting a better job." 
To the question, "Is the supply of farm labor In your neigh- 
borhood satisfactory.^" the answer Is: "No; because the 
people have gone out of the baby business"; and when 
asked as to the remedy, he answers, "Give a pension to every 
mother who gives birth to seven living boys on American 
soil." To the question, "Are the conditions surrounding 



454 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

hired labor on the farm in your neighborhood satisfactory to 
the hired men ?" he answers : "Yes, unless he is a drunken 
cuss," adding that he would like to blow up the stillhouses 
and root out whisky and beer. To the question, "Are the 
sanitary conditions on the farms in your neighborhood 
satisfactory ? " he answers : "No ; too careless about chicken 
yards, and the like, and poorly covered wells. In one well 
on neighbor's farm I counted seven snakes in the wall of the 
well, and they used the water daily : his wife dead now and 
he is looking for another." He ends by stating that the most 
important single thing to be done for the betterment of 
country life is "good roads"; but in his answers he shows 
very clearly that most important of all is the individual 
equation of the man or woman. 

Like the rest of the Commissions described in this chapter, 
the Country Life Commission cost the Government not 
one cent, but laid before the President and the country a 
mass of information so accurate and so vitally important 
as to disturb the serenity of the advocates of things as they 
are ; and therefore it incurred the bitter opposition of the 
reactionaries. The report of the Country Life Commission 
was transmitted to Congress by me on February 9, 1909. 
In the accompanying message I asked for $25,000 to print 
and circulate the report and to prepare for publication 
the immense amount of valuable material collected by the 
Commission but still unpublished. The reply made by 
Congress was not only a refusal to appropriate the money, 
but a positive prohibition against continuing the work. 
The Tawney amendment to the Sundry Civil bill forbade 
the President to appoint any further Commissions unless 
specifically authorized by Congress to do so. Had this 
prohibition been enacted earlier and complied with, it 
would have prevented the appointment of the six Roosevelt 
Commissions. But I would not have complied with it. 
Mr. Tawney, one of the most efficient representatives of the 
cause of special privilege as against public interest to be 
found in the House, was later, in conjunction with Senator 
Hale and others, able to induce my successor to accept their 
view. As what was almost my last official act, I replied to 



THE NATURAL RESOURCES OF THE NATION 455 

Congress that if I did not believe the Tawney amendment 
to be unconstitutional I would veto the Sundry Civil bill 
which contained it, and that if I were remaining in office 
I would refuse to obey it. The memorandum ran in part: 
"The chief object of this provision, however, is to prevent the 
Executive repeating what it has done within the last year 
in connection with the Conservation Commission and the 
Country Life Commission. It is for the people of the coun- 
try to decide whether or not they believe in the work done 
by the Conservation Commission and by the Country 
Life Commission. * * * 

" If they believe in improving our waterways, in preventing 
the waste of soil, in preserving the forests, in thrifty use of 
the mineral resources of the country for the nation as a whole 
rather than merely for private monopolies, in working for 
the betterment of the condition of the men and women 
who live on the farms, then they will unstintedly condemn 
the action of every man who is in any way responsible for 
insertingthis provision, and will support those members of the 
legislative branch who opposed its adoption. I would 
not sign the bill at all if I thought the provision entirely 
effective. But the Congress cannot prevent the President 
from seeking advice. Any future President can do as I 
have done, and ask disinterested men who desire to serve 
the people to give this service free to the people through 
these commissions. * * * 

"My successor, the President-elect, in a letter to the 
Senate Commission on Appropriations, asked for the con- 
tinuance and support of the Conservation Commission. 
The Conservation Commission was appointed at the re- 
quest of the Governors of over forty States, and almost all 
of these States have since appointed commissions to co- 
operate with the National Commission. Nearly all the 
great national organizations concerned with natural re- 
sources have been heartily cooperating with the commis- 
sion. 

"With all these facts before it, the Congress has refused 
to pass a law to continue and provide for the commission ; 
and it now passes a law with the purpose of preventing 



456 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

the Executive from continuing the commission at all. 
The Executive, therefore, must now either abandon the work 
and reject the cooperation of the States, or else must con- 
tinue the work personally and through executive officers 
whom he may select for that purpose." 

The Chamber of Commerce of Spokane, Washington, a 
singularly energetic and far-seeing organization, itself 
published the report which Congress had thus discreditably 
refused to publish. 

The work of the Bureau of Corporations, under Herbert 
• Knox Smith, formed an important part of the Conservation 
movement almost from the beginning. Mr. Smith was a 
member of the Inland Waterways Commission and of the 
National Conservation Commission and his Bureau pre- 
pared material of importance for the reports of both. The 
investigation of standing timber in the United States by 
the Bureau of Corporations furnished for the first time 
a positive knowledge of the facts. Over nine hundred 
counties in timbered regions were covered by the Bureau, 
and the work took five years. The most important 
facts ascertained were that forty years ago three-fourths of 
the standing timber in the United States was publicly 
owned, while at the date of the report four-fifths of the timber 
in the country was in private hands. The concentration of 
private ownership had developed to such an amazing extent 
that about two hundred holders owned nearly one-half of 
all privately owned timber in the United States ; and of 
this the three greatest holders, the Southern Pacific 
Railway, the Northern Pacific Railway, and the Weyer- 
haeuser Timber Company, held over ten per cent. Of this 
work, Mr. Smith says : 

"It was important, indeed, to know the facts so that we 
could take proper action toward saving the timber still left 
to the public. But of far more importance was the light 
that this history (and the history of our other resources) 
throws on the basic attitude, tradition and governmental 
beliefs of the American people. The whole standpoint of 
the people toward the proper aim of government, toward 
the relation of property to the citizen, and the relation of 



THE NATURAL RESOURCES OF THE NATION 457 

property to the government, were brought out first by this 
Conservation work." 

The worl<: of the Bureau of Corporations as to v/ater power 
was equally striking. In addition to bringing the con- 
centration of water-power control first prominently to public 
attention, through material furnished for my message in my 
veto of the James River Dam Bill, the work of the Bureau 
showed that ten great interests and their allies held nearly 
sixty per cent of the developed water power of the United 
States. Says Commissioner Smith: "Perhaps the most 
important thing in the whole work was its clear demonstra- 
tion of the fact that the only effective place to control water 
power in the public interest is at the power sites ; that as to 
powers now owned by the public It is absolutely essential that 
the public shall retain title. , . , The only way in which 
the public can get back to itself the margin of natural advan- 
tage in the water-power site is to rent that site at a rental 
which, added to the cost of power production there, will make 
the total cost of water power about the same as fuel power, 
and then let the two sell at the same price, i.e., the price of 
fuel power." 

Of the fight of the water-power men for States Rights at 
the St. Paul Conservation Congress in September, 1909, 
Commissioner Smith says : 

"It was the first open sign of the shift of the special interests 
to the Democratic party for a logical political reason, 
namely, because of the availability of the States Rights idea 
for the purposes of the large corporations. It marked openly 
the turn of the tide," 

Mr. Smith brought to the attention of the Inland Water- 
ways Commission the overshadowing importance to water- 
ways of their relation with railroad lines, the fact that the 
bulk of the traffic is long distance traffic, that it cannot pass 
over the whole distance by water, while it can go anywhere 
by rail, and that therefore the power of the rail lines to pro- 
rate or not to pro-rate, with water lines really determines the 
practical value of a river channel. The controlling value of 
terminalsandthe factthatoutof fiftyof our leading ports, over 
half the active water frontage in twenty-one ports was con- 



THE NATURAL RESOURCES OF THE NATION 459 

trolled by the railroads, was also brought to the Commission's 
attention, and reports of great value were prepared both 
for the Inland Waterways Commission and for the National 
Conservation Commission. In addition to developing the 
basic facts about the available timber supply, about water- 
ways, water power, and iron ore, Mr. Smith helped to 
develop and drive Into the public conscience the idea that 
the people ought to retain title to our natural resources 
and handle them by the leasing system. 

The things accomplished that have been enumerated 
above were of immediate consequence to the economic 
well-being of our people. In addition certain things were 
done of which the economic bearing was more remote, but 
which bore directly upon our welfare, because they add to 
the beauty of living and therefore to the joy of life. Securing 
a great artist, Saint-Gaudens, to give us the most beautiful 
coinage since the decay of Hellenistic Greece was one such 
act. In this case I had power myself to direct the Mint to 
employ Saint-Gaudens. The first, and most beautiful, of his 
coins were Issued in thousands before Congress assembled 
or could Intervene ; and a great and permanent improve- 
ment was made in the beauty of the coinage. In the same 
way, on the advice and suggestion of Frank Millet, we 
got some really capital medals by sculptors of the first 
rank. Similarly, the new buildings in Washington were 
erected and placed in proper relation to one another, on 
plans provided by the best architects and landscape architects. 
I also appointed a Fine Arts Council, an unpaid body of the 
best architects, painters, and sculptors In the country, to 
advise the Government as to the erection and decoration of 
all new buildings. The "pork-barrel" Senators and Con- 
gressmen felt for this body an instinctive, and perhaps from 
their standpoint a natural, hostility; and my successor a 
couple of months after taking ofhce revoked the appointment 
and disbanded the Council. 

Even more important was the taking of steps to preserve 
from destruction beautiful and wonderful wild creatures 
whose existence was threatened by greed and wantonness. 
During the seven and a half years closing on March 4, 1909, 



46o THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

more was accomplished for the protection of wild life in the 
United States than during all the previous years, excepting 
only the creation of the Yellowstone National Park. The 
record includes the creation of five National Parks — Crater 
Lake, Oregon ; Wind Cave, South Dakota ; Piatt, Oklahoma ; 
Sully Hill, North Dakota, and Mesa Verde, Colorado ; 
four big game refuges in Oklahoma, Arizona, Montana, and 
Washington ; fifty-one bird reservations ; and the enact- 
ment of laws for the protection of wild life in Alaska, the 
District of Columbia, and on National bird reserves. These 
measures may be briefly enumerated as follows : 

The enactment of the first game laws for the Territory of 
Alaska in 1902 and 1908, resulting in the regulation of the 
export of heads and trophies of big game and putting an 
end to the slaughter of deer for hides along the southern 
coast of the Territory. 

The securing in 1902 of the first appropriation for the 
preservation of buffalo and the establishment in the Yellow- 
stone National Park of the first and now the largest herd of 
buffalo belonging to the Government. 

The passage of the Act of January 24, 1905, creating the 
Wichita Game Preserves, the first of the National game pre- 
serves. In 1907, 12,000 acres of this preserve were inclosed 
with a woven wire fence for the reception of the herd 
of fifteen buffalo donated by the New York Zoological 
Society. 

The passage of the Act of June 29, 1906, providing for the 
establishment of the Grand Canon Game Preserve of Ari- 
zona, now comprising 1,492,928 acres. 

The passage of the National Monuments Act of June 8, 
1906, under which a number of objects of scientific interest 
have been preserved for all time. Among the Monuments 
created are Muir Woods, Pinnacles National Monument 
in California and the Mount Olympus National Monument, 
Washington, which form important refuges for game. 

The passage of the Act of June 30, 1906, regulating shooting 
in the District of Columbia and making three-fourths of the 
environs of the National Capital within the District in 
effect a National Refuge. 



THE NATURAL RESOURCES OF THE NATION 461 

The passage of the Act of May 23, 1908, providing for 
the establishment of the National Bison Range in Montana. 
This range comprises about 18,000 acres of land formerly 
in the Flathead Indian Reservation, on which is now es- 
tablished a herd of eighty buffalo, the nucleus of which was 
donated to the Government by the American Bison Society. 

The issue of the Order protecting birds on the Niobrara 
Military Reservation, Nebraska, in 1908, making this entire 
reservation in effect a bird reservation. 

The establishment by Executive Order between March 14, 
1903, and March 4, 1909, of fifty-one National Bird Reserva- 
tions distributed in seventeen States and Territories from 
Porto Rico to Hawaii and Alaska. The creation of these 
reservations at once placed the United States in the front 
rank in the world work of bird protection. Among these res- 
ervations are the celebrated Pelican Island rookery in In- 
dian River, Florida ; The Mosquito Inlet Reservation, Flor- 
ida, the northernmost home of the manatee ; the extensive 
marshes bordering Klamath and Malheur Lakes in Oregon, 
formerly the scene of slaughter of ducks for market and 
ruthless destruction of plume birds for the millinery trade ; 
the Tortugas Key, Florida, where, in connection with the 
Carnegie Institute, experiments have been made on the 
homing instinct of birds ; and the great bird colonies on 
Laysan and sister islets in Hawaii, some of the greatest 
colonies of sea birds in the world. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE BIG STICK AND THE SQUARE DEAL 

ONE of the vital questions with which as President 
I had to deal was the attitude of the Nation 
toward the great corporations. Men who under- 
stand and practice the deep underlying philos- 
ophy of the Lincoln school of American political thought 
are necessarily Hamiltonian in their belief in a strong and 
efficient National Government and Jeffersonian in their 
belief in the people as the ultimate authority, and in the 
welfare of the people as the end of Government. The men 
who first applied the extreme Democratic theory in American 
life were, like Jefferson, ultra individualists, for at that 
time what was demanded by our people was the largest 
liberty for the individual. During the century that had 
elapsed since Jefferson became President the need had been 
exactly reversed. There had been in our country a riot of 
individualistic materialism, under which complete freedom 
for the individual — that ancient license which President 
Wilson a century after the term was excusable has called 
the "New" Freedom — turned out in practice to mean 
perfect freedom for the strong to wrong the weak. The 
total absence of governmental control had led to a porten- 
tous growth in the financial and industrial world both of 
natural individuals and of artificial individuals — that is, 
corporations. In no other country in the world had such 
enormous fortunes been gained. In no other country in 
the world was such power held by the men who had gained 
these fortunes ; and these men almost always worked 
through, and by means of, the giant corporations which they 
controlled. The power of the mighty industrial overlords 
of the country had increased with giant strides, while the 

462 



THE BIG STICK AND THE SQUARE DEAL 463 

methods of controlling them, or checking abuses by them, 
on the part of the people, through the Government, remained 
archaic and therefore practically impotent. The courts, 
not unnaturally, but most regrettably, and to the grave 
detriment of the people and of their own standing, had for 
a quarter of a century been on the whole the agents of 
reaction, and by conflicting decisions which, however, in 
their sum were hostile to the interests of the people, had 
left both the nation and the several States well-nigh impo- 
tent to deal with the great business combinations. Some- 
times they forbade the Nation to interfere, because such 
Interference trespassed on the rights of the States ; sometimes 
they forbade the States to Interfere (and often they were 
wise in this), because to do so would trespass on the rights 
of the Nation ; but always, or well-nigh always, their action 
was negative action against the interests of the people. 
Ingeniously devised to limit their power against wrong, 
instead of affirmative action giving to the people power to 
right wrong. They had rendered these decisions sometimes 
as upholders of property rights against human rights, being 
especially zealous in securing the rights of the very men 
who were most competent to take care of themselves ; and 
sometimes in the name of liberty, in the name of the so- 
called "new freedom," in reality the old, old "freedom," 
which secured to the powerful the freedom to prey on the 
poor and the helpless. 

One of the main troubles was the fact that the men who 
saw the evils and who tried to remedy them attempted to 
work in two wholly different ways, and the great majority 
of them in a way that offered little promise of real better- 
ment. They tried (by the Sherman law method) to bolster 
up an individualism already proved to be both futile and 
mischievous ; to remedy by more individualism the con- 
centration that was the inevitable result of the already 
existing individualism. They saw the evil done by the big 
combinations, and sought to remedy It by destroying them 
and restoring the country to the economic conditions of the 
middle of the nineteenth century. This was a hopeless 
effort, and those who went into it, although they regarded 



464 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

themselves as radical progressives, really represented a form 
of sincere rural toryism. They confounded monopolies 
with big business combinations, and in the effort to pro- 
hibit both alike, instead of where possible prohibiting one 
and drastically controlling the other, they succeeded merely 
in preventing any effective control of either. 

On the other hand, a few men recognized that corporations 
and combinations had become indispensable In the business 
world, that it was folly to try to prohibit them, but that it 
was also folly to leave them without thoroughgoing control. 
These men realized that the doctrines of the old laissez 
faire economists, of the believers in unlimited competition, 
unlimited Individualism, were in the actual state of affairs 
false and mischievous. They realized that the Govern- 
ment must now Interfere to protect labor, to subordinate 
the big corporation to the public welfare, and to shackle 
cunning and fraud exactly as centuries before it had inter- 
fered to shackle the physical force which does wrong by 
violence. 

The big reactionaries of the business world and their 
allies and Instruments among politicians and newspaper 
editors took advantage of this division of opinion, and 
especially of the fact that most of their opponents were on 
the wrong path ; and fought to keep matters absolutely 
unchanged. These men demanded for themselves an Im- 
munity from governmental control which, if granted, would 
have been as wicked and as foolish as immunity to the 
barons of the twelfth century. Many of them were evil 
men. Many others were just as good men as were some 
of these same barons ; but they were as utterly un- 
able as any medieval castle-owner to understand what the 
public Interest really was. There have been aristocracies 
which have played a great and beneficent part at stages 
in the growth of mankind ; but we had come to the stage 
where for our people what was needed was a real democ- 
racy ; and of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and 
the most vulgar Is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny 
of a plutocracy. 

When I became President, the question as to the method 



THE BIG STICK AND THE SQUARE DEAL 465 

by which the United States Government was to control 
the corporations was not yet important. The absolutely 
vital question was whether the Government had power to 
control them at all. This question had not yet been decided 
in favor of the United States Government. It was useless 
to discuss methods of controlling big business by the National 
Government until it was definitely settled that the National 
Government had the power to control it. A decision of the 
Supreme Court had, with seeming definiteness, settled that 
the National Government had not the power. 

This decision I caused to be annulled by the court that 
had rendered it ; and the present power of the National 
Government to deal efTectively with the trusts is due solely 
to the success of the Administration in securing this reversal 
of its former decision by the Supreme Court. 

The Constitution was formed very largely because it 
had become imperative to give to some central authority 
the power to regulate and control interstate commerce. 
At that time when corporations were in their infancy and 
big combinations unknown, there was no difficulty in exer- 
cising the power granted. In theory, the right of the Na- 
tion to exercise this power continued unquestioned. But 
changing conditions obscured the matter in the sight of the 
people as a whole ; and the conscious and the unconscious 
advocates of an unlimited and uncontrollable capitalism 
gradually secured the whittling away of the National power 
to exercise this theoretical right of control until it practi- 
cally vanished. After the Civil War, with the portentous 
growth of industrial combinations in this country, came a 
period of reactionary decisions by the courts which, as 
regards corporations, culminated in what is known as the 
Knight case. 

The Sherman Anti-Trust Law was enacted in 1890 because 
the formation of the Tobacco Trust and the Sugar Trust, 
the only two great trusts then in the country (aside from the 
Standard Oil Trust, which was a gradual growth), had 
awakened a popular demand for legislation to destroy 
monopoly and curb industrial combinations. This demand 
the Anti-Trust Law was intended to satisfy. The Admin- 

2h 



466 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



istrations of Mr. Harrison and Mr. Cleveland evidently 
construed this law as prohibiting such combinations in the 
future, not as condemning those which had been formed 
prior to its enactment. In 1895, however, the Sugar Trust, 
whose output originally was about fifty-five per cent of all 
sugar produced in the United States, obtained control of 
three other companies In Philadelphia by exchanging Its 

stock for theirs, and thus 
increased its business until 
It controlled ninety-eight 
per cent of the entire prod- 
uct. Under Cleveland, the 
Government brought pro- 
ceedings against the Sugar 
Trust, Invoking the Anti- 
Trust Law, to set aside the 
acquisition of these cor- 
porations. The test case 
was on the absorption of 
the Knight Company.^ The 
Supreme Court of the United 
States, with but one dissent- 
ing vote, held adversely to 
the Government. They took 
the ground that the power 
conferred by the Constitu- 
tion to regulate and control 
Interstate commerce did not 
extend to the production or 
manufacture of commodities within a State, and that noth- 
ing In the Sherman Anti-Trust Law prohibited a corpo- 
ration from acquiring all the stock of other corporations 
through exchange of Its stock for theirs, such exchange 
not being "commerce" In the opinion of the Court, even 
though by such acquisition the corporation was enabled 
to control the entire production of a commodity that was a 




Oscar Straus. 



1 The case is known in the law books as U. S. vs. E. C. Knight, 156 U. S., 
Sept., p. I. 



THE BIG STICK AND THE SQUARE DEAL 467 

necessary of life. The effect of this decision was not merely 
the absolute nullification of the Anti-Trust Law, so far as 
industrial corporations were concerned, but was also in 
effect a declaration that, under the Constitution, the Na- 
tional Government could pass no law really effective for 
the destruction or control of such combinations. 

This decision left the National Government, that is, 
the people of the Nation, practically helpless to deal with 
the large combinations of modern business. The courts 
in other cases asserted the power of the Federal Government 
to enforce the Anti-Trust Law so far as transportation rates 
by railways engaged in interstate commerce were concerned. 
But so long as the trusts were free to control the produc- 
tion of commodities without interference from the General 
Government, they were well content to let the transporta- 
tion of commodities take care of itself — especially as the 
law against rebates was at that time a dead letter; and the 
Court by its decision in the Knight case had interdicted 
any interference by the President or by Congress with the 
production of commodities. It was on the authority of 
this case that practically all the big trusts in the United 
States, excepting those already mentioned, were formed. 
Usually they were organized as "holding" companies, each 
one acquiring control of its constituent corporations by 
exchanging its stock for theirs, an operation which the 
Supreme Court had thus decided could not be prohibited, 
controlled, regulated, or even questioned by the Federal 
Government. 

Such was the condition of our laws when I acceded to 
the Presidency. Just before my accession, a small group 
of financiers desiring to profit by the governmental impo- 
tence to which we had been reduced by the Knight deci- 
sion, had arranged to take control of practically the entire 
railway system in the Northwest — possibly as the first step 
toward controlling the entire railway system of the country. 
This control of the Northwestern railway systems was to 
be effected by organizing a new "holding" company, and 
exchanging its stock against the stock of the various corpo- 
rations engaged in railway transportation throughout that 



468 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

vast territory, exactly as the Sugar Trust had acquired 
control of the Knight company and other concerns. This 
company was called the Northern Securities Company. 
Not long after I became President, on the advice of the 
Attorney-General, Mr. Knox, and through him, I ordered 
proceedings to be instituted for the dissolution of the com- 
pany. As far as could be told by their utterances at the 
time, among all the great lawyers in the United States Mr. 
Knox was the only one who believed that this action could 
be sustained. The defense was based expressly on the 
ground that the Supreme Court in the Knight case had 
explicitly sanctioned the formation of such a company as 
the Northern Securities Company. The representatives of 
privilege intimated, and sometimes asserted outright, that 
in directing the action to be brought I had shown a lack of 
respect for the Supreme Court, which had already decided 
the question at issue by a vote of eight to one. Mr. Justice 
White, then on the Court and now Chief Justice, set forth 
the position that the two cases were in principle identical 
with incontrovertible logic. In giving the views of the dis- 
senting minority on the action I had brought, he said : 

"The parallel between the two cases [the Knight case and 
the Northern Securities case] is complete. The one cor- 
poration acquired the stock of other and competing corpo- 
rations in exchange for its own. It was conceded for the 
purposes of the case, that in doing so monopoly had been 
brought about in the refining of sugar, that the sugar to 
be produced was likely to become the subject of interstate 
commerce, and indeed that part of it would certainly become 
so. But the power of Congress was decided not to extend 
to the subject, because the ownership of the stock in the 
corporations was not itself commerce." ^ 

Mr. Justice White was entirely correct in this statement. 
The cases were parallel. It was necessary to reverse the 
Knight case in the interests of the people against monopoly 
and privilege just as it had been necessary to reverse the 
Dred Scott case in the interest of the people against slavery 

^ Northern Securities Company et al. vs. U. S., 156 U. S., Sept., pp. 391-2. 



THE BIG STICK AND THE SQUARE DEAL 469 

and privilege; just as later it became necessary to reverse 
the New York Bakeshop case In the interest of the people 
against that form of monopolistic privilege which put 
human rights below property rights where wage workers were 
concerned. 

By a vote of five to four the Supreme Court reversed its 
decision in the Knight case, and in the Northern Securities 
case sustained the Government, The power to deal with 
industrial monopoly and suppress it and to control and reg- 
ulate combinations, of which the Knight case had deprived 
the Federal Government, was thus restored to it by the 
Northern Securities case. After this later decision was 
rendered, suits were brought by my direction against the 
American Tobacco Company and the Standard Oil Com- 
pany. Both were adjudged criminal conspiracies, and their 
dissolution ordered. The Knight case was finally over- 
thrown. The vicious doctrine it embodied no longer re- 
mains as an obstacle to obstruct the pathway of justice when 
it assails monopoly. Messrs. Knox, Moody, and Bonaparte, 
who successively occupied the position of Attorney-General 
under me, were profound lawyers and fearless and able men ; 
and they completely established the newer and more whole- 
some doctrine under which the Federal Government may 
now deal with monopolistic combinations and conspiracies. 

The decisions rendered in these various cases brought 
under my direction constitute the entire authority upon 
which any action must rest that seeks through the exercise 
of national power to curb monopolistic control. The 
men who organized and directed the Northern Securities 
Company were also the controlling forces in the Steel Cor- 
poration, which has since been prosecuted under the act. 
The proceedings against the Sugar Trust for corruption 
in connection with the New York Custom House are suf- 
ficiently interesting to be considered separately. 

From the standpoint of giving complete control to the 
National Government over big corporations engaged in 
inter-State business, it would be impossible to over-esti- 
mate the importance of the Northern Securities decision 
and of the decisions afterwards rendered in line with it in 



470 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



connection with the other trusts whose dissolution was 
ordered. The success of the Northern Securities case 
definitely established the power of the Government to deal 
with all great corporations. Without this success the Na- 
tional Government must have remained in the impotence to 
which it had been reduced by the Knight decision as regards 
the most important of its internal functions. But our 

success in establishing the 
power of the National Gov- 
ernment to curb monopolies 
did not establish the right 
method of exercising that 
power. We had gained the 
power. We had not devised 
the proper method of exer- 
cising it. 

Monopolies can, although 
in rather cumbrous fashion, 
be broken up by law suits. 
Great business combina- 
tions, however, cannot pos- 
sibly be made useful instead 
of noxious industrial agen- 
cies merely by law suits, and 
especially by law suits sup- 
posed to be carried on for 
their destruction and not 
for their control and regu- 
lation. I at once began to 
urge upon Congress the need 
of laws supplementing the Anti-Trust Law — for this law 
struck at all big business, good and bad, alike, and as 
the event proved was very inefficient in checking bad 
big business, and yet was a constant threat against decent 
business men. I strongly urged the inauguration of a sys- 
tem of thoroughgoing and drastic Governmental regulation 
and control over all big business combinations engaged in 
inter-State industry. 

Here I was able to accomplish only a small part of what 




Copyright by Underwood and Underwood. 
Herbert Knox Smith. 



THE BIG STICK AND THE SQUARE DEAL 471 

I desired to accomplish. I was opposed both by the foolish 
radicals who desired to break up all big business, with the 
impossible ideal of returning to mid-nineteenth century 
industrial conditions ; and also by the great privileged inter- 
ests themselves, who used these ordinarily — but sometimes 
not entirely — well-meaning "stool pigeon progressives" 
to further their own cause. The worst representatives of 
big business encouraged the outcry for the total abolition 
of big business, because they knew that they could not be 
hurt in this way, and that such an outcry distracted the 
attention of the public from the really efficient method of 
controlling and supervising them, in just but masterly 
fashion, which was advocated by the sane representatives 
of reform. However, we succeeded in making a good 
beginning by securing the passage of a law creating the 
Department of Commerce and Labor, and with it the 
erection of the Bureau of Corporations. The first head of 
the Department of Commerce and Labor was Mr. Cortel- 
you, later Secretary of the Treasury. He was succeeded 
by Mr. Oscar Straus. The first head of the Bureau of Cor- 
porations was Mr. Garfield, who was succeeded by Mr. 
Herbert Knox Smith. No four better public servants from 
the standpoint of the people as a whole could have been 
found. 

The Standard Oil Company took the lead in opposing 
all this legislation. This was natural, for it had been the 
worst offender in the amassing of enormous fortunes by 
improper methods of all kinds, at the expense of business 
rivals and of the public, including the corruption of public 
servants. If any man thinks this condemnation extreme, 
I refer him to the language officially used by the Supreme 
Court of the nation in its decision against the Standard 
Oil Company. Through their counsel, and by direct tele- 
grams and letters to Senators and Congressmen from various 
heads of the Standard Oil organization, they did their best 
to kill the bill providing for the Bureau of Corporations. 
I got hold of one or two of these telegrams and letters, how- 
ever, and promptly published them ; and, as generally hap- 
pens in such a case, the men who were all-powerful as long 



472 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

as they could work in secret and behind closed doors became 
powerless as soon as they were forced into the open. The 
bill went through without further difficulty. 

The true way of dealing with monopoly is to prevent it 
by administrative action before it grows so powerful that 
even when courts condemn it they shrink from destroying 
it. The Supreme Court in the Tobacco and Standard Oil 
cases, for instance, used very vigorous language in con- 
demning these trusts ; but the net result of the decision was of 
positive advantage to the wrongdoers, and this has tended 
to bring the whole body of our law into disrepute in quarters 
where it is of the very highest importance that the law be 
held in respect and even in reverence. My effort was to 
secure the creation of a Federal Commission which should 
neither excuse nor tolerate monopoly, but prevent it when 
possible and uproot it when discovered ; and which should 
in addition effectively control and regulate all big combina- 
tions, and should give honest business certainty as to what 
the law was and security as long as the law was obeyed. 
Such a Commission would furnish a steady expert control, a 
control adapted to the problem ; and dissolution is neither 
control nor regulation, but is purely negative ; and negative 
remedies are of little permanent avail. Such a Commission 
would have complete power to examine into every big cor- 
poration engaged or proposing to engage in business between 
the States. It would have the power to discriminate sharply 
between corporations that are doing well and those that are 
doing ill ; and the distinction between those who do well and 
those who do ill would be defined in terms so clear and unmis- 
takable that no one could misapprehend them. Where a 
company is found seeking its profits through serving the 
community by stimulating production, lowering prices or 
improving service, while scrupulously respecting the rights 
of others (including its rivals, its employees, its customers, 
and the general public), and strictly obeying the law, then 
no matter how large its capital, or how great the volume of 
its business it would be encouraged to still more abundant 
production, or better service, by the fullest protection that 
the Government could afford it. On the other hand, if a 



THE BIG STICK AND THE SQUARE DEAL 473 

corporation were found seeking profit through injury or 
oppression of the community, by restricting production 
through trick or device, by plot or conspiracy against com- 
petitors, or by oppression of wage-workers, and then extort- 
ing high prices for the commodity it had made artificially 
scarce, it would be prevented from organizing if its nefarious 
purpose could be discovered in time, or pursued and sup- 
pressed by all the power of Government whenever found in 
actual operation. Such a commission, with the power I 
advocate, would put a stop to abuses of big corporations and 
small corporations alike ; it would draw the line on conduct 
and not on size ; it would destroy monopoly, and make the 
biggest business man in the country conform squarely to 
the principles laid down by the American people, while at 
the same time giving fair play to the little man and certainty 
of knowledge as to what was wrong and what was right both 
to big man and little man. 

Although under the decision of the courts the National 
Government had power over the railways, I found, when I 
became President, that this power was either not exercised 
at all or exercised with utter inefficiency. The law against 
rebates was a dead letter. All the unscrupulous railway 
men had been allowed to violate it with impunity; and 
because of this, as was inevitable, the scrupulous and 
decent railway men had been forced to violate it themselves, 
under penalty of being beaten by their less scrupulous 
rivals. It was not the fault of these decent railway men. 
It was the fault of the Government. 

Thanks to a first-class railway man, Paul Morton of the 
Santa Fe, son of Mr. Cleveland's Secretary of Agriculture, 
I was able completely to stop the practice. Mr. Morton 
volunteered to aid the Government in abolishing rebates. 
He frankly stated that he, like every one else, had been guilty 
in the matter ; but he insisted that he uttered the senti- 
ments of the decent railway men of the country when he 
said that he hoped the practice would be stopped, and that 
if I would really stop it, and not merely make believe to stop 
it, he would give the testimony which would put into the 
hands of the Government the power to put a complete 



474 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

check to the practice. Accordingly he testified, and on the 
information which he gave us we were able to take such 
action through the Inter-State Commerce Commission 
and the Department of Justice, supplemented by the neces- 
sary additional legislation, that the evil was absolutely 
eradicated. He thus rendered, of his own accord, at his 
own personal risk, and from purely disinterested motives, 
an invaluable service to the people, a service which no other 
man who was able to render was willing to render. As an 
immediate sequel, the world-old alliance between Blifil 
and Black George was immediately revived against Paul 
Morton. In giving rebates he had done only what every 
honest railway man in the country had been obliged to do 
because of the failure of the Government to enforce the 
prohibition as regards dishonest railway men. But unlike 
his fellows he had then shown the courage and sense of 
obligation to the public which made him come forward and 
without evasion or concealment state what he had done, 
in order that we might successfully put an end to the prac- 
tice ; and put an end to the practice we did, and we did it 
because of the courage and patriotism he had shown. The 
unscrupulous railway men, whose dishonest practices were 
thereby put a stop to, and the unscrupulous demagogues 
who were either under the influence of these men or desirous 
of gaining credit with thoughtless and ignorant people no 
matter who was hurt, joined in vindictive clamor against 
Mr. Morton. They actually wished me to prosecute him, 
although such prosecution would have been a piece of unpar- 
donable ingratitude and treachery on the part of the public 
toward him — for I was merely acting as the steward of 
the public in this matter. I need hardly say that I stood 
by him ; and later he served under me as Secretary of the 
Navy, and a capital Secretary he made too. 

We not only secured the stopping of rebates, but in the 
Hepburn Rate Bill we were able to put through a measure 
which gave the Inter-State Commerce Commission for the 
first time real control over the railways. There were two 
or three amusing features in the contest over this bill. 
All of the great business interests which objected to Govern- 



THE BIG STICK AND THE SQUARE DEAL 475 

mental control banded to fight it, and they were helped by 
the honest men of ultra-conservative type who always 
dread change, whether good or bad. We finally forced it 
through the House. In the Senate it was referred to a com- 
mittee in which the Republican majority was under the con- 
trol of Senator Aldrich, who took the lead in opposing the 
bill. There was one Republican on the committee, however, 
whom Senator Aldrich could not control — Senator Dolliver, 
of Iowa. The leading Democrat on the committee was 
Senator Tillman, of South Carolina, with whom I was not 
on good terms, because I had been obliged to cancel an invi- 
tation to him to dine at the White House on account of his 
having made a personal assault in the Senate Chamber on 
his colleague from South Carolina ; and later I had to take 
action against him on account of his conduct in connection 
with certain land matters. Senator Tillman favored the 
bill. The Republican majority in the committee under 
Senator Aldrich, when they acted adversely on the bill, 
turned it over to Senator Tillman, thereby making him 
its sponsor. The object was to create what it was hoped 
would be an impossible situation in view of the relations 
between Senator Tillman and myself. I regarded the action 
as simply childish. It was a curious instance of how able 
and astute men sometimes commit blunders because of sheer 
inability to understand intensity of disinterested motive 
in others. I did not care a rap about Mr. Tillman's getting 
credit for the bill, or having charge of it. I was delighted 
to go with him or with any one else just so long as he was 
traveling my way — and no longer. 

There was another amusing incident in connection with 
the passage of the bill. All the wise friends of the effort to 
secure Governmental control of corporations know that this 
Government control must be exercised through administra- 
tive and not judicial officers if it is to be effective. Every- 
thing possible should be done to minimize the chance of 
appealing from the decisions of the administrative officer 
to the courts. But it is not possible Constitutionally, and 
probably would not be desirable anyhow, completely to 
abolish the appeal. Unwise zealots wished to make the 



476 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



effort totally to abolish the appeal in connection with the 
Hepburn Bill. Representatives of the special interests 
wished to extend the appeal to include what it ought not 
to include. Between stood a number of men whose votes 
would mean the passage of, or the failure to pass, the bill, 
and who were not inclined towards either side. Three or 
four substantially identical amendments were proposed, 
and we then suddenly found ourselves face to face with an 

absurd situation. The good 
men who were willing to go 
with us but had conserva- 
tive misgivings about the 
ultra-radicals would not ac- 
cept a good amendment if 
one of the latter proposed 
it ; and the radicals would 
not accept their own amend- 
ment if one of the conser- 
vatives proposed it. Each 
side got so wrought up as 
to be utterly unable to get 
matters into proper perspec- 
tive ; each prepared to stand 
on unimportant trifles ; each 
announced with hysterical 
emphasis — the reformers 
just as hysterically as the 
reactionaries — that the de- 
cision as regards each un- 
important trifle determined the worth or worthlessness of the 
measure. Gradually we secured a measurable return to sane 
appreciation of the essentials. Finally both sides reluctantly 
agreed to accept the so-called Allison amendment which did 
not, as a matter of fact, work any change in the bill at all. 
The amendment was drawn by Attorney-General Moody 
after consultation with the Inter-State Commerce Com- 
mission, and was forwarded by me to Senator Dolliver; 
it was accepted, and the bill became law. 

Thanks to this law and to the way in which the Inter- 




WiLLiAM H. Moody. 



THE BIG STICK AND THE SQUARE DEAL 477 

State Commerce Commission was backed by tlie Admin- 
istration, the Commission, under men like Prouty, Lane, 
and Clark, became a most powerful force for good. Some 
of the good that we had accomplished was undone after the 
close of my Administration by the unfortunate law creating 
a Commerce Court; but the major part of the immense 
advance we had made remained. There was one point on 
which I insisted, and upon which it is necessary always to 
insist. The Commission cannot do permanent good unless 
it does justice to the corporations precisely as it exacts 
justice from them. The public, the shippers, the stock and 
bondholders, and the employees, all have their rights, and 
none should be allowed unfair privileges at the expense of 
the others. Stock watering, and swindling of any kind 
should of course not only be stopped but punished. When, 
however, a road is managed fairly and honestly, and when 
it renders a real and needed service, then the Government 
must see that it is not so burdened as to make it impossible 
to run it at a profit. There is much wise legislation neces- 
sary for the safety of the public, or — like workmen's 
compensation — necessary to the well-being of the employee, 
which nevertheless imposes such a burden on the road that 
the burden must be distributed between the general public 
and the corporation, or there will be no dividends. In 
such a case it may be the highest duty of the commission 
to raise rates ; and the commission, when satisfied that the 
necessity exists, in order to do justice to the owners of the 
road, should no more hesitate to raise rates, than under 
other circumstances to lower them. 

So much for the"big stick" in dealing with the corporations 
when they went wrong. Now for a sample of the square deal. 

In the fall of 1907 there were severe business disturbances 
and financial stringency, culminating in a panic which arose 
in New York and spread over the country. The damage 
actually done was great, and the damage threatened was 
incalculable. Thanks largely to the action of the Gov- 
ernment, the panic was stopped before, instead of being 
merely a serious business check, it became a frightful and 
Nation-wide calamity, a disaster fraught with untold misery 



478 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

and woe to all our people. For several days the Nation 
trembled on the brink of such a calamity, of such a disaster. 
During these days both the Secretary of the Treasury 
and I personally were in hourly communication with New 
York, following every change in the situation, and trying 
to anticipate every development. It was the obvious 
duty of the Administration to take every step possible to 
prevent appalling disaster by checking the spread of the 
panic before it grew so that nothing could check it. And 
events moved with such speed that it was necessary to decide 
and to act on the instant, as each successive crisis arose, if 
the decision and action were to accomplish anything. The 
Secretary of the Treasury took various actions, some on his 
own initiative, some by my direction. Late one evening 
I was informed that two representatives of the Steel Cor- 
poration wished to see me early the following morning, the 
precise object not being named. Next morning, while at 
breakfast, I was informed that Messrs. Frick and Gary were 
waiting at the office. I at once went over, and, as the 
Attorney-General, Mr. Bonaparte, had not yet arrived 
from Baltimore, where he had been passing the night, I 
sent a message asking the Secretary of State, Mr. Root, who 
was also a lawyer, to join us, which he did. Before the close 
of the interview and in the presence of the three gentlemen 
named, I dictated a note to Mr. Bonaparte, setting forth 
exactly what Messrs. Frick and Gary had proposed, and 
exactly what I had answered — so that there might be no 
possibility of misunderstanding. This note was published 
in a Senate Document while I was still President. It runs 
as follows : 

The White House, Washington, 

November 4, 1907. 
My dear Mr. Attorney-General : 

Judge E. H. Gary and Mr. H. C. Frick, on behalf of the 
Steel Corporation, have just called upon me. They state 
that there is a certain business firm (the name of which I 
have not been told, but which is of real importance in New 
York business circles), which will undoubtedly fail this week 
if help is not given. Among its assets are a majority of the 



THE BIG STICK AND THE SQUARE DEAL 479 

securities of the Tennessee Coal Company. Application 
has been urgently made to the Steel Corporation to purchase 
this stock as the only means of avoiding a failure. Judge 
Gary and Mr. Frick informed me that as a mere business 
transaction they do not care to purchase the stock; that 
under ordinary circumstances they would not consider 
purchasing the stock, because but little benefit will come 
to the Steel Corporation from the purchase ; that they are 
aware that the purchase will be used as a handle for 'attack 
upon them on the ground that they are striving to secure a 
monopoly of the business and prevent competition — not 
that this would represent what could honestly be said, but 
what might recklessly and untruthfully be said. 

They further informed me that, as a matter of fact, the 
policy of the company has been to decline to acquire more 
than sixty per cent of the steel properties, and that this 
purpose has been persevered in for several years past, with 
the object of preventing these accusations, and, as a matter 
of fact, their proportion of steel properties has slightly 
decreased, so that it is below this sixty per cent, and the 
acquisition of the property in question will not raise it above 
sixty per cent. But they feel that it is immensely to their 
interest, as to the interest of every responsible business 
man, to try to prevent a panic and general industrial smash- 
up at this time, and that they are willing to go into this 
transaction, which they would not otherwise go into, because 
it seems the opinion of those best fitted to express judgment 
in New York that it will be an important factor in preventing 
a break that might be ruinous ; and that this has been urged 
upon them by the combination of the most responsible 
bankers in New York who are now thus engaged in endeav- 
oring to save the situation. But they asserted that they 
did not wish to do this if I stated that it ought not to be 
done. I answered that, while of course I could not advise 
them to take the action proposed, I felt it no public duty 
of mine to interpose any objections. 

Sincerely yours, 
(Signed) Theodore Roosevelt. 

Hon. Charles J. Bonaparte, 
Atto rney-Ge neral. 



48o THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

Mr. Bonaparte received this note in about an hour, 
and that same morning he came over, acknowledged its 
receipt, and said that my answer was the only proper 
answer that could have been made, having regard both 
to the law and to the needs of the situation. He stated 
that the legal situation had been in no way changed, 
and that no sufficient ground existed for prosecution of 
the Steel Corporation. But I acted purely on my own 
initiative, and the responsibility for the act was solely 
mine. 

I was intimately acquainted with the situation in New 
York. The word "panic" means fear, unreasoning fear; 
to stop a panic it is necessary to restore confidence ; and 
at the moment the so-called Morgan Interests were the 
only interests which retained a full hold on the confidence 
of the people of New York — not only the business 
people, but the immense mass of men and women who 
owned small Investments or had small savings in the 
banks and trust companies. Mr. Morgan and his asso- 
ciates were of course fighting hard to prevent the loss of 
confidence and the panic distrust from increasing to such 
a degree as to bring any other big financial institutions 
down ; for this would probably have been followed by a 
general, and very likely a worldwide, crash. The Knicker- 
bocker Trust Company had already failed, and runs had 
begun on, or were threatened as regards, two other big 
trust companies. These companies were now on the fight- 
ing line, and it was to the interest of everybody to 
strengthen them, in order that the situation might be 
saved. It was a matter of 'general knowledge and belief 
that they, or the individuals prominent in them, held 
the securities of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company, 
which securities had no market value, and were useless as a 
source of strength In the emergency. The Steel Corporation 
securities, on the contrary, were immediately marketable, 
their great value being known and admitted all over the 
world — as the event showed. The proposal of Messrs. 
Frick and Gary was that the Steel Corporation should 
at once acquire the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company, and 



THE BIG STICK AND THE SQUARE DEAL 481 



thereby substitute, among the assets of the threatened 
institutions (which, by the way, they did not name to me), 
securities of great and immediate value for securities which 
at the moment were of no value. It was necessary for 
me to decide on the instant, before the Stock Exchange 
opened, for the situation in New York was such that any 
hour might be vital, and 
failure to act for even an 
hour might make all subse- 
quent effort to act utterly 
useless. From the best in- 
formation at my disposal, I 
believed (what was actually 
the fact) that the addition 
of the Tennessee Coal and 
Iron property would only in- 
crease the proportion of the 
Steel Company's holdings 
by about four per cent, mak- 
ing them about sixty-two per 
cent instead of about fifty- 
eight per cent of the total 
value in the country ; an 
addition which, by itself, in 
my judgment (concurred in, 
not only by the Attorney- 
General but by every com- 
petent lawyer), worked no 
change in the legal status 
of the Steel corporation. The diminution in the percentage 
of holdings, and production, has gone on steadily, and the 
percentage is now about ten per cent less than it was ten 
years ago. 

The action was emphatically for the general good. It 
offered the only chance for arresting the panic, and it did 
arrest the panic. I answered Messrs. Frick and Gary, as 
set forth in the letter quoted above, to the effect that I did 
not deem it my duty to interfere, that is, to forbid the 
action which more than anything else in actual fact saved 




Charles J. Bonaparte. 



482 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

the situation. The result justified my judgment. The 
panic was stopped, public confidence in the solvency of 
the threatened institution being at once restored. 

Business was vitally helped by what I did. The benefit 
was not only for the moment. It was permanent. Par- 
ticularly was this the case in the South. Three or four 
years afterwards I visited Birmingham. Every man I met, 
without exception, who was competent to testify, informed 
me voluntarily that the results of the action taken had been 
of the utmost benefit to Birmingham, and therefore to 
Alabama, the industry having profited to an extraordinary 
degree, not only from the standpoint of the business, but 
from the standpoint of the community at large and of the 
wage-workers, by the change in ownership. The results 
of the action I took were beneficial from every standpoint, 
and the action itself, at the time when it was taken, was 
vitally necessary to the welfare of the people of the United 
States. 

I would have been derelict in my duty, I would have 
shown myself a timid and unworthy public servant, if in that 
extraordinary crisis I had not acted precisely as I did act. 
In every such crisis the temptation to indecision, to non- 
action, is great, for excuses can always be found for non- 
action, and action means risk and the certainty of blame to 
the man who acts. But if the man is worth his salt 
he will do his duty, he will give the people the benefit 
of the doubt, and act in any way which their interests 
demand and which is not affirmatively prohibited by law, 
unheeding the likelihood that he himself, when the crisis 
is over and the danger past, will be assailed for what he 
has done. 

Every step I took In this matter was open as the day, and 
was known in detail at the moment to all people. The 
press contained full accounts of the visit to me of Messrs. 
Frick and Gary, and heralded widely and with acclamation 
the results of that visit. At the time the relief and rejoicing 
over what had been done were well-nigh universal. The 
danger was too imminent and too appalling for men to be 
willing to condemn those who were successful in saving them 



THE BIG STICK AND THE SQUARE DEAL 483 

from it. But I fully understood and expected that when 
there was no longer danger, when the fear had been for- 
gotten, attack would be made upon me ; and as a matter of 
fact after a year had elapsed the attack was begun, and has 
continued at intervals ever since ; my ordinary assailant 
being some politician of rather cheap type. 

If I were on a sail-boat, I should not ordinarily meddle 
with any of the gear; but if a sudden squall struck us, and 
the main sheet jammed, so that the boat threatened to 
capsize, I would unhesitatingly cut the main sheet, even 
though I were sure that the owner, no matter how grateful 
to me at the moment for having saved his life, would a 
few weeks later, when he had forgotten his danger and his 
fear, decide to sue me for the value of the cut rope. But 
I would feel a hearty contempt for the owner who so acted. 

There were many other things that we did in connection 
with corporations. One of the most important was the pas- 
sage of the meat inspection law because of scandalous abuses 
shown to exist in the great packing-houses in Chicago and 
elsewhere. There was a curious result of this law, similar 
to what occurred in connection with the law providing for 
effective railway regulation. The big beef men bitterly 
opposed the law; just as the big railway men opposed the 
Hepburn Act. Yet three or four years after these laws had 
been put on the statute books every honest man both in the 
beef business and the railway business came to the conclu- 
sion that they worked good and not harm to the decent 
business concerns. They hurt only those who were not 
acting as they should have acted. The law providing for 
the inspection of packing-houses, and the Pure Food and 
Drugs Act, were also extremely important ; and the way in 
which they were administered was even more important. 
It would be hard to overstate the value of the service rend- 
ered in all these cases by such cabinet officers as Moody and 
Bonaparte, and their outside assistants of the stamp of 
Frank Kellogg. 

It would be useless to enumerate all the suits we brought. 
Some of them I have already touched upon. Others, such 
as the suits against the Harriman railway corporations, 



484 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

which were successful, and which had been rendered abso- 
lutely necessary by the grossly improper action of the cor- 
porations concerned, offered no special points of interest. 
The Sugar Trust proceedings, however, may be mentioned 
as showing just the kind of thing that was done and the kind 
of obstacle encountered and overcome in prosecutions of 
this character. 

It was on the advice of my secretary, William Loeb, Jr., 
afterward head of the New York Custom-House, that the 
action was taken which started the uncovering of the frauds 
perpetrated by the Sugar Trust and other companies in 
connection with the importing of sugar. Loeb had from 
time to time told me that he was sure that there was fraud 
in connection with the importations by the Sugar Trust 
through the New York Custom-House. Finally, some time 
toward the end of 1904, he informed me that Richard Parr, 
a sampler at the New York Appraisers' Stores (whose duties 
took him almost continually on the docks in connection 
with the sampling of merchandise), had called on him, and 
had stated that in his belief the sugar companies were 
defrauding the Government in the matter of weights, and 
had stated that if he could be made an investigating officer 
of the Treasury Department, he was confident that he could 
show there was wrongdoing. Parr had been a former school 
fellow of Loeb in Albany, and Loeb believed him to be loyal, 
honest, and efficient. He thereupon laid the matter before 
me, and advised the appointment of Parr as a special em- 
ployee of the Treasury Department, for the specific pur- 
pose of investigating the alleged sugar frauds. I instructed 
the Treasury Department accordingly, and was informed 
that there was no vacancy in the force of special employees, 
but that Parr would be given the first place that opened 
up. Early in the spring of 1905 Parr came to Loeb again, 
and said that he had received additional information about 
the sugar frauds, and was anxious to begin the investiga- 
tion. Loeb again discussed the matter with me ; and I 
notified the Treasury Department to appoint Parr immedi- 
ately. On June i, 1905, he received his appointment, and 
was assigned to the port of Boston for the purpose of gain- 



THE BIG STICK AND THE SQUARE DEAL 485 

ing some experience as an Investigating officer. During 
the month he was transferred to the Maine District, with 
headquarters at Portland, where he remained until March, 
1907. During his service in Maine he uncovered extensive 
wool smuggling frauds. At the conclusion of the wool case, 
he appealed to Loeb to have him transferred to New York, 
so that he might undertake the investigation of the sugar 
underweighing frauds. I now called the attention of 
Secretary Cortelyou personally to the matter, so that he 
would be able to keep a check over any subordinates who 
might try to interfere with Parr, for the conspiracy was 
evidently widespread, the wealth of the offenders great, 
and the corruption in the service far-reaching — while 
moreover as always happens with "respectable" offenders, 
there were many good men who sincerely disbelieved in 
the possibility of corruption on the part of men of such 
high financial standing. Parr was assigned to New York 
early in March, 1907, and at once began an active investiga- 
tion of the conditions existing on the sugar docks. This 
terminated in the discovery of a steel spring in one of the 
scales of the Havemeyer & Elder docks in Brooklyn, No- 
vember 20, 1907, which enabled us to uncover what were 
probably the most colossal frauds ever perpetrated in the 
Customs Service. From the beginning of his active work 
in the investigation of the sugar frauds in March, 1907, to 
March 4, 1909, Parr, from time to time, personally reported 
to Loeb, at the White House, the progress of his investi- 
gations, and Loeb in his turn kept me personally advised. 
On one occasion there was an attempt made to shunt Parr 
off the investigation and substitute another agent of the 
Treasury, who was suspected of having some relations 
with the sugar companies under investigation ; but Parr 
reported the facts to Loeb, I sent for Secretary Cortelyou, 
and Secretary Cortelyou promptly took charge of the 
matter himself, putting Parr back on the investigation. 
During the investigation Parr was subjected to all sorts 
of harassments, including an attempt to bribe him by 
Spitzer, the dock superintendent of the Havemeyer & Elder 
Refinery, for which Spitzer was convicted and served a term 



486 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

in prison. Brzezinski, a special agent, who was assisting 
Parr, was convicted of perjury and also served a term in 
prison, he having changed his testimony, in the trial of 
Spitzer for the attempted bribery of Parr, from that which 
he gave before the Grand Jury, For his extraordinary 
services in connection with this investigation Parr was 
granted an award of $100,000 by the Treasury Department. 
District-Attorney Stimson, of New York, assisted by 
Denison, Frankfurter, Wise, and other employees of the 
Department of Justice, took charge of the case, and carried 
on both civil and criminal proceedings. The trial in the 
action against the Sugar Trust, for the recovery of duties on 
the cargo of sugar, which was being sent over the scales 
at the time of the discovery of the steel spring by Parr, was 
begun in 1908; judgment was rendered against the defend- 
ants on March 5, 1909, the day after I left office. Over 
four million dollars were recovered and paid back into the 
United States Treasury by the sugar companies which had 
perpetrated the various forms of fraud. These frauds were 
unearthed by Parr, Loeb, Stimson, Frankfurter, and the 
other men mentioned and their associates, and it was to them 
that the people owed the refunding of the huge sum of money 
mentioned. We had already secured heavy fines from the 
Sugar Trust, and from various big railways, and private 
individuals, such as Edwin Earle, for unlawful rebates. 
In the case of the chief offender, the American Sugar Refin- 
ing Company (the Sugar Trust), criminal prosecutions were 
carried on against every living man whose position was such 
that he would naturally know about the fraud. All of them 
were indicted, and the biggest and most responsible ones 
were convicted. The evidence showed that the president 
of the company, Henry O. Havemeyer, virtually ran the 
entire company, and was responsible for all the details of 
the management. He died two weeks after the fraud was 
discovered, just as proceedings were being begun. Next to 
him in importance was the secretary and treasurer, Charles 
R. Heike, who was convicted. Various other officials and 
employees of the Trust, and various Government employees, 
were indicted, and most of them convicted. Ernest W. 



THE BIG STICK AND THE SQUARE DEAL 487 



Gerbracht, the superintendent of one of the refineries, was 
convicted, but his sentence was commuted to a short jail 
imprisonment, because he became a Government witness 
and greatly assisted the Government in the suits. 

Heike's sentence was commuted so as to excuse him from 
going to the penitentiary; just as the penitentiary sentence 
of Morse, the big New York banker, who was convicted of 
gross fraud and misapplication of funds, was commuted. 
Both commutations were 
granted long after I left 
office. In each case the 
commutation was granted 
because, as was stated, of 
the prisoner's age and state 
of health. In Morse's case 
the President originally re- 
fused the request, saying 
that Morse had exhibited 
"fraudulent and criminal 
disregard of the trust im- 
posed upon him," that "he 
was entirely unscrupulous 
as to the methods he 
adopted," and "that he 
seemed at times to be ab- 
solutely heartless with re- 
gard to the consequences to 
others, and he showed great 
shrewdness in obtaining 
large sums of money from the bank without adequate 
security and without making himself personally liable there- 
for." The two cases may be considered in connection with 
the announcement in the public press that on May 17, 
1913, the President commuted the sentence of Lewis A. 
Banks, who was serving a very long term penitentiary sen- 
tence for an attack on a girl in the Indian Territory; "the 
reason for the commutation which is set forth in the 
press being that 'Banks is in poor health.' " 

It is no easy matter to balance the claims of justice and 




Paul Morton. 



488 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

mercy in such cases. In these three cases, of all of which I 
had personal cognizance, I disagreed radically with the views 
my successors took, and with the views which many respect- 
able men took who in these and similar cases, both while I 
was in office and afterward, urged me to show, or to ask 
others to show, clemency. It then seemed to me, and it now 
seems to me, that such clemency is from the larger stand- 
point a gross wrong to the men and women of the country. 

One of the former special assistants of the district-attorney, 
Mr. W. Cleveland Runyon, in commenting bitterly on the 
release of Heike and Morse on account of their health, 
pointed out that their health apparently became good when 
once they themselves became free men, and added : 

"The commutation of these sentences amounts to a direct 
interference with the administration of justice by the courts. 
Heike got a ^25,000 salary and has escaped his imprison- 
ment, but what about the six ^18 a week checkers, who were 
sent to jail, one of them a man of more than sixty ? It is 
cases like this that create discontent and anarchy. They 
make it seem plain that there is one law for the rich and 
another for the poor man, and I for one will protest." 

In dealing with Heike the individual (or Morse or any 
other individual), it is necessary to emphasize the social 
aspects of his case. The moral of the Heike case, as has been 
well said, is "how easy it is for a man in modern corporate 
organization to drift into wrongdoing." The moral re- 
straints are loosened in the case of a man like Heike by the 
insulation of himself from the sordid details of crime, through 
industrially coerced intervening agents. Professor Ross has 
made the penetrating observation that "distance disinfects 
dividends"; it also weakens individual responsibility, par- 
ticularly on the part of the very managers of large business, 
who should feel it most acutely. One of the officers of the 
Department of Justice who conducted the suit, and who 
inclined to the side of mercy in the matter, nevertheless 
writes: "Heike is a beautiful illustration of mental and 
moral obscuration in the business life of an otherwise val- 
uable member of society. Heike had an ample share in the 
guidance of the affairs of the American Sugar Company, 



THE BIG STICK AND THE SQUARE DEAL 489 

and we are apt to have a foreshortened picture of his respon- 
sibility, because he operated from the easy coign of vantage 
of executive remoteness. It is difficult to say to what extent 
he did, directly or indirectly, profit by the sordid practices 
of his company. But the social damage of an individual 
in his position may be just as deep, whether merely the 
zest of the game or hard cash be his dominant motive." 

I have coupled the cases of the big banker and the Sugar 
Trust official and the case of the man convicted of a criminal 
assault on a woman. All of the criminals were released 
from penitentiary sentences on grounds of ill health. The 
offenses were typical of the worst crimes committed at the 
two ends of the social scale. One offense was a crime of 
brutal violence ; the other offenses were crimes of astute 
corruption. All of them were offenses which in my judg- 
ment were of such a character that clemency towards the 
offender worked grave injustice to the community as a whole, 
injustice so grave that its effects might be far-reaching in 
their damage. 

Every time that rape or criminal assault on a woman is 
pardoned, and anything less than the full penalty of the 
law exacted, a premium is put on the practice of lynching 
such offenders. Every time a big monied offender, who 
naturally excites interest and sympathy, and who has many 
friends, is excused from serving a sentence which a man of 
less prominence and fewer friends would have to serve, 
justice is discredited in the eyes of plain people — and to 
undermine faith in justice is to strike at the foundation of 
the Republic. As for ill health, it must be remembered 
that few people are as healthy in prison as they would be 
outside ; and there should be no discrimination among 
criminals on this score ; either all criminals who grow un- 
healthy should be let out, or none. Pardons must some- 
times be given in order that the cause of justice may be 
served ; but in cases such as these I am considering, while I 
know that many amiable people differ from me, I am obliged 
to say that in my judgment the pardons work far-reaching 
harm to the cause of justice. 

Among the big corporations themselves, even where 



490 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



they did wrong, there was a wide difference in the moral 
obHquity indicated by the wrongdoer. There was a wide 
distinction between the offenses committed in the case of 
the Northern Securities Company, and the offenses because 
of which the Sugar Trust, the Tobacco Trust, and the 
Standard Oil Trust were successfully prosecuted under my 

Administration. It was 
vital to destroy the North- 
ern Securities Company ; 
but the men creating it 
had done so in open and 
above-board fashion, acting 
under what they, and most 
of the members of the bar, 
thought to be the law es- 
tablished by the Supreme 
Court in the Knight sugar 
case. But the Supreme 
Court in its decree dis- 
solving the Standard Oil 
and Tobacco Trusts, con- 
demned them in the se- 
verest language for moral 
turpitude ; and an even 
severer meed of condem- 
nation should be visited 
on the Sugar Trust. 

However, all the trusts 
and big corporations against which we proceeded — which 
included in their directorates practically all the biggest 
financiers in the country — joined in making the bitterest 
assaults on me and on my Administration. Of their actions 
I wrote as follows to Attorney-General Bonaparte, who had 
been a peculiarly close friend and adviser through the period 
covered by my public life in high office and who, together 
with Attorney-General Moody, possessed the same under- 
standing sympathy with my social and industrial program 
that was possessed by such officials as Straus, Garfield, 
H. K. Smith, and Pinchot. The letter runs : 




James R. Garfield. 



THE BIG STICK AND THE SQUARE DEAL 491 

January 2, 1908. 

My dear Bonaparte : 

I must congratulate you on your admirable speech at 
Chicago. You said the very things it was good to say at 
this time. What you said bore especial weight because it 
represented what you had done. You have shown by what 
you have actually accomplished that the law is enforced 
against the wealthiest corporation, and the richest and most 
powerful manager or manipulator of that corporation, just 
as resolutely and fearlessly as against the humblest citizen. 
The Department of Justice is now in very fact the Depart- 
ment of Justice, and justice is meted out with an even hand 
to great and small, rich and poor, weak and strong. Those 
who have denounced you and the action of the Department 
of Justice are either misled, or else are the very wrongdoers, 
and the agents of the very wrongdoers, who have for so many 
years gone scot-free and flouted the laws with impunity. 
Above all, you are to be congratulated upon the bitterness 
felt and expressed towards you by the representatives and 
agents of the great law-defying corporations of immense 
wealth, who, until within the last half-dozen years, have 
treated themselves and have expected others to treat them 
as being beyond and above all possible check from law. 

It was time to say something, for the representatives of 
predatory wealth, of wealth accumulated on a giant scale 
by iniquity, by wrongdoing in many forms, by plain swind- 
ling, by oppressing wage-workers, by manipulating secur- 
ities, by unfair and unwholesome competition and by stock- 
jobbing, — in short, by conduct abhorrent to every man of 
ordinarily decent conscience, have during the last few 
months made it evident that they are banded together to 
work for a reaction, to endeavor to overthrow and discredit 
all who honestly administer the law, and to secure a return 
to the days when every unscrupulous wrongdoer could do 
what he wished unchecked, provided he had enough money. 
They attack you because they know your honesty and fear- 
lessness, and dread them. The enormous sums of money 
these men have at their control enable them to carry on 
an effective campaign. They find their tools in a portion 



492 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

of the public press, including especially certain of the great 
New York newspapers. They find their agents in some 
men in public life, — now and then occupying, or having 
occupied, positions as high as Senator or Governor, — in 
some men in the pulpit, and most melancholy of all, in a 
few men on the bench. By gifts to colleges and univer- 
sities they are occasionally able to subsidize in their own 
interest some head of an educational body, who, save only 
a judge, should of all men be most careful to keep his skirts 
clear from the taint of such corruption. There are ample 
material rewards for those who serve with fidelity the 
Mammon of unrighteousness, but they are dearly paid for 
by that institution of learning whose head, by example 
and precept, teaches the scholars who sit under him that 
there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. The 
amount of money the representatives of the great monied 
interests are willing to spend can be gauged by their recent 
publication broadcast throughout the papers of this country 
from the Atlantic to the Pacific of huge advertisements, 
attacking with envenomed bitterness the Administration's 
policy of warring against successful dishonesty, advertise- 
ments that must have cost enormous sums of money. This 
advertisement, as also a pamphlet called "The Roosevelt 
Panic," and one or two similar books and pamphlets, are 
written especially in the interest of the Standard Oil and 
Harriman combinations, but also defend all the individuals 
and corporations of great wealth that have been guilty of 
wrongdoing. From the railroad rate law to the pure food 
law, every measure for honesty in business that has been 
pressed during the last six years, has been opposed by these 
men, on its passage and in its administration, with every 
resource that bitter and unscrupulous craft could suggest, 
and the command of almost unlimited money secure. These 
men do not themselves speak or write ; they hire others to 
do their bidding. Their spirit and purpose are made clear 
alike by the editorials of the papers owned in, or whose 
policy is dictated by, Wall Street, and by the speeches of 
public men who, as Senators, Governors, or Mayors, have 
served these their masters to the cost of the plain people. 



THE BIG STICK AND THE SQUARE DEAL 493 

At one time one of their writers or speakers attacks the rate 
law as the cause of the panic ; he is, whether in public life 
or not, usually a clever corporation lawyer, and he is not so 
foolish a being as to believe in the truth of what he says ; 
he has too closely represented the railroads not to know 
well that the Hepburn Rate Bill has helped every honest 
railroad, and has hurt only the railroads that regarded 
themselves as above the law. At another time, one of them 
assails the Administration for not imprisoning people under 
the Sherman Anti-Trust Law ; for declining to make what 
he well knows, in view of the actual attitude of juries (as 
shown in the Tobacco Trust cases and in San Francisco 
in one or two of the cases brought against corrupt business 
men) would have been the futile endeavor to imprison defend- 
ants whom we are actually able to fine. He raises the 
usual clamor, raised by all who object to the enforcement of 
the law, that we are fining corporations instead of putting 
the heads of the corporations in jail ; and he states that this 
does not really harm the chief offenders. Were this state- 
ment true, he himself would not be found attacking us. 
The extraordinary violence of the assault upon our policy 
contained in speeches like these, in the articles in the sub- 
sidized press, in such huge advertisements and pamphlets 
as those above referred to, and the enormous sums of money 
spent in these various ways, give a fairly accurate measure 
of the anger and terror which our actions have caused the 
corrupt men of vast wealth to feel in the very marrow of 
their being. 

The man thus attacking us is usually, like so many of his 
fellows, either a great lawyer, or a paid editor who takes his 
commands from the financiers and his arguments from their 
attorneys. If the former, he has defended many malefac- 
tors, and he knows well that, thanks to the advice of lawyers 
like himself, a certain kind of modern corporation has been 
turned into an admirable instrument by which to render 
it well nigh impossible to get at the really guilty man, so 
that in most cases the only way of punishing the wrong is 
by fining the corporation or by proceeding personally against 
some of the minor agents. These lawyers and their employ- 



494 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

ers are the men mainly responsible for this state of things, 
and their responsibility is shared with the legislators who 
ingeniously oppose the passing of just and effective laws, 
and with those judges whose one aim seems to be to construe 
such laws so that they cannot be executed. Nothing is sil- 
lier than this outcry on behalf of the "innocent stockholders " 
in the corporations. We are besought to pity the Standard 
Oil Company for a fine relatively far less great than the 
fines every day inflicted in the police courts upon multitudes 
of push cart peddlers and other petty offenders, whose 
woes never extort one word from the men whose withers 
are wrung by the woes of the mighty. The stockholders 
have the control of the corporation in their own hands. 
The corporation officials are elected by those holding the 
majority of the stock and can keep office only by having 
behind them the good-will of these majority stockholders. 
They are not entitled to the slightest pity if they deliber- 
ately choose to resign into the hands of great wrongdoers 
the control of the corporations in which they own the stock. 
Of course innocent people have become involved in these 
big corporations and suffer because of the misdeeds of their 
criminal associates. Let these innocent people be careful 
not to invest In corporations where those In control are not 
men of probity, men who respect the laws ; above all let 
them avoid the men who make it their one effort to evade 
or defy the laws. But If these honest innocent people are 
In the majority In any corporation they can Immediately 
resume control and throw out of the directory the men who 
misrepresent them. Does any man for a moment suppose 
that the majority stockholders of the Standard Oil are others 
then Mr. Rockefeller and his associates themselves and the 
beneficiaries of their wrongdoing ? When the stock Is 
watered so that the Innocent investors suffer, a grave wrong 
Is Indeed done to these innocent investors as well as to the 
public ; but the public men, lawyers and editors, to whom I 
refer, do not under these circumstances express sympathy 
for the Innocent ; on the contrary they are the first to protest 
with frantic vehemence against our efforts by law to put 
a stop to over-capitalization and stock-watering. The 



THE BIG STICK AND THE SQUARE DEAL 495 

apologists of successful dishonesty always declaim against 
any effort to punish or prevent it on the ground that such 
effort will "unsettle business." It is they who by their 
acts have unsettled business ; and the very men raising this 
cry spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in securing, by 
speech, editorial, book or pamphlet, the defense by mis- 
statement of what they have done ; and yet when we correct 
their misstatements by telling the truth, they declaim 
against us for breaking silence, lest "values be unsettled !" 
They have hurt honest business men, honest working men, 
honest farmers ; and now they clamor against the truth being 
told. 

The keynote of all these attacks upon the effort to secure 
honesty in business and in politics, is expressed in a recent 
speech, in which the speaker stated that prosperity had 
been checked by the effort for the "moral regeneration of 
the business world," an effort which he denounced as "un- 
natural, unwarranted and injurious" and for which he 
stated the panic was the penalty. The morality of such a 
plea is precisely as great as if made on behalf of the men 
caught in a gambling establishment when that gambling 
establishment is raided by the police. If such words mean 
anything they mean that those whose sentiments they 
represent stand against the effort to bring about a moral 
regeneration of business which will prevent a repetition 
of the insurance, banking and street railroad scandals in 
New York ; a repetition of the Chicago and Alton deal ; a 
repetition of the combination between certain professional 
politicians, certain professional labor leaders and certain 
big financiers from the disgrace of which San Francisco has 
just been rescued ; a repetition of the successful efforts by 
the Standard Oil people to crush out every competitor, to 
overawe the common carriers, and to establish a monopoly 
which treats the public with the contempt which the public 
deserves so long as it permits men like the public men of 
whom I speak to represent it in politics, men like the heads 
of colleges to whom I refer to educate its youth. The out- 
cry against stopping dishonest practices among the very 
wealthy is precisely similar to the outcry raised against every 



496 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

effort for cleanliness and decency in city government because, 
forsooth, it will "hurt business." The same outcry is made 
against the Department of Justice for prosecuting the heads 
of colossal corporations that is made against the men who 
in San Francisco are prosecuting with impartial severity 
the wrongdoers among business men, public officials, and 




Copyright by Underwood and Underwood. 

GiFFORD PiNCHOT. 

labor leaders alike. The principle is the same in the two 
cases. Just as the blackmailer and the bribe giver stand 
on the same evil eminence of infamy, so the man who 
makes an enormous fortune by corrupting Legislatures and 
municipalities and fleecing his stockholders and the public 
stands on a level with the creature who fattens on the blood 
money of the gambling house, the saloon and the brothel. 



THE BIG STICK AND THE SQUARE DEAL 497 

Moreover, both kinds of corruption in the last analysis are 
far more intimately connected than would at first sight 
appear ; the wrong-doing is at bottom the same. Corrupt 
business and corrupt politics act and react, with ever in- 
creasing debasement, one on the other ; the rebate-taker, 
the franchise-trafficker, the manipulator of securities, the 
purveyor and protector of vice, the black-mailing ward 
boss, the ballot box stuffer, the demagogue, the mob leader, 
the hired bully and mankiller, all alike work at the same 
web of corruption, and all alike should be abhorred by 
honest men. 

The "business" which is hurt by the movement for 
honesty is the kind of business which, in the long run, it 
pays the country to have hurt. It is the kind of business 
which has tended to make the very name "high finance" 
a term of scandal to which all honest American men of 
business should join in putting an end. One of the special 
pleaders for business dishonesty, in a recent speech. In 
denouncing the Administration for enforcing the law against 
the huge and corrupt corporations which have defied the 
law, also denounced it for endeavoring to secure a far- 
reaching law making employers liable for Injuries to their 
employees. It is meet and fit that the apologists for cor- 
rupt wealth should oppose every efi"ort to relieve weak and 
helpless people from crushing misfortune brought upon 
them by injury In the business from which they gain a bare 
livelihood and their employers fortunes. It Is hypocritical 
baseness to speak of a girl who works in a factory where the 
dangerous machinery is unprotected as having the "right" 
freely to contract to expose herself to dangers to life and limb. 
She has no alternative but to suffer want or else to expose 
herself to such dangers, and when she loses a hand or is other- 
wise maimed or disfigured for life it is a moral wrong that 
the burden of the risk necessarily incidental to the business 
should be placed with crushing weight upon her weak shoul- 
ders and the man who has profited by her work escape scot- 
free. This is what our opponents advocate, and it is proper 
that they should advocate It, for It rounds out their advocacy 
of those most dangerous members of the criminal class, 

2K 



498 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

the criminals of vast wealth, the men who can afford best 
to pay for such championship in the press and on the stump. 
It is difficult to speak about the judges, for it behooves 
us all to treat with the utmost respect the high office of 
judge; and our judges as a whole are brave and upright 
men. But there is need that those who go wrong should not 
be allowed to feel that there is no condemnation of their 
wrongdoing. A judge who on the bench either truckles to 
the mob or bows down before a corporation ; or who, having 
left the bench to become a corporation lawyer, seeks to aid 
his clients by denouncing as enemies of property all those 
who seek to stop the abuses of the criminal rich ; such a 
man performs an even worse service to the body politic 
than the Legislator or Executive who goes wrong. In no 
way can respect for the courts be so quickly undermined 
as by teaching the public through the action of a judge 
himself that there is reason for the loss of such respect. 
The judge who by word or deed makes it plain that the 
corrupt corporation, the law-defying corporation, the law- 
defying rich man, has in him a sure and trustworthy ally, 
the judge who by misuse of the process of injunction makes 
it plain that in him the wage-worker has a determined and 
unscrupulous enemy, the judge who when he decides in an 
employers' liability or a tenement house factory case shows 
that he has neither sympathy for nor understanding of those 
fellow-citizens of his who most need his sympathy and under- 
standing ; these judges work as much evil as if they pandered 
to the mob, as if they shrank from sternly repressing violence 
and disorder. The judge who does his full duty well stands 
higher, and renders a better service to the people, than any 
other public servant ; he is entitled to greater respect ; and 
if he is a true servant of the people, if he is upright, wise and 
fearless, he will unhesitatingly disregard even the wishes of 
the people if they conflict with the eternal principles of right 
as against wrong. He must serve the people ; but he must 
serve his conscience first. All honor to such a judge; and 
all honor cannot be rendered him if it is rendered equally 
to his brethren who fall immeasurably below the high ideals 
for which he stands. There should be a sharp discrimination 



THE BIG STICK AND THE SQUARE DEAL 499 

against such judges. They claim immunity from criticism, 
and the claim is heatedly advanced by men and newspapers 
like those of whom I speak. Most certainly they can claim 
immunity from untruthful criticism ; and their champions, 
the newspapers and the public men I have mentioned, 
exquisitely illustrate by their own actions mendacious 
criticism in its most flagrant and iniquitous form. 

But no servant of the people has a right to expect to be 
free from just and honest criticism. It is the newspapers, 
and the public men whose thoughts and deeds show them to 
be most alien to honesty and truth who themselves loudly 
object to truthful and honest criticism of their fellow-serv- 
ants of the great monied interests. 

We have no quarrel with the individuals, whether public 
men, lawyers or editors, to whom I refer. These men derive 
their sole power from the great, sinister offenders who stand 
behind them. They are but puppets who move as the strings 
are pulled by those who control the enormous masses of 
corporate wealth which if itself left uncontrolled threatens 
dire evil to the Republic. It is not the puppets, but the 
strong, cunning men and the mighty forces working for evil 
behind, and to a certain extent through, the puppets, with 
whom we have to deal. We seek to control law-defying 
wealth, in the first place to prevent its doing evil, and in the 
next place to avoid the vindictive and dreadful radicalism 
which if left uncontrolled it is certain in the end to arouse. 
Sweeping attacks upon all property, upon all men of means, 
without regard to whether they do well or ill, would sound 
the death knell of the Republic ; and such attacks become 
inevitable if decent citizens permit rich men whose lives are 
corrupt and evil to domineer in swollen pride, unchecked and 
unhindered, over the destinies of this country. We act in 
no vindictive spirit, and we are no respecters of persons. 
If a labor union does what is wrong, we oppose it as fearlessly 
as we oppose a corporation that does wrong ; and we stand 
with equal stoutness for the rights of the man of wealth 
and for the rights of the wage-workers ; just as much so for 
one as for the other. We seek to stop wrongdoing ; and we 
desire to punish the wrongdoer only so far as is necessary in 



500 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

order to achieve this end. We are the stanch upholders 
of every honest man, whether business man or wage-worker. 

I do not for a moment believe that our actions have 
brought on business distress ; so far as this is due to local and 
not world-wide causes, and to the actions of any particular 
individuals, it is due to the speculative folly and flagrant 
dishonesty of a few men of great wealth, who now seek to 
shield themselves from the effects of their own wrongdoings 
by ascribing its results to the actions of those who have 
sought to put a stop to the wrongdoing. But if it were true 
that to cut out rottenness from the body politic meant a 
momentary check to an unhealthy seeming prosperity, I 
should not for one moment hesitate to put the knife to the 
cancer. On behalf of all our people, on behalf no less of 
the honest man of means than of the honest man who earns 
each day's livelihood by that day's sweat of his brow, it is 
necessary to insist upon honesty in business and politics 
alike, in all walks of life, in big things and in little things ; 
upon just and fair dealing as between man and man. We 
are striving for the right in the spirit of Abraham Lincoln 
when he said : 

"Fondly do we hope — • fervently do we pray — that this 
mighty scourge may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills 
that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsmen's 
two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, 
and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be 
paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three 
thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'The judgments 
of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.' 

"With malice toward none; with charity for all; with 
firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let 
us strive on to finish the work we are in." 
Sincerely yours, 

Theodore Roosevelt. 
Hon. Charles J. Bonaparte. 
Attorney-General. 



CHAPTER XIII 

SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL JUSTICE 

BY the time I became President I had grown to feel 
with deep intensity of conviction that govern- 
mental agencies must find their justification 
largely in the way in which they are used for 
the practical betterment of living and working conditions 
among the mass of the people. I felt that the fight was 
really for the abolition of privilege ; and one of the first 
stages in the battle was necessarily to fight for the rights of 
the workingman. For this reason I felt most strongly 
that all that the government could do in the interest 
of labor should be done. The Federal Government can 
rarely act with the directness that the State governments 
act. It can, however, do a good deal. My purpose was 
to make the National Government itself a model employer 
of labor, the efi"ort being to make the per diem employee 
just as much as the Cabinet officer regard himself as one of 
the partners employed in the service of the public, proud of 
his work, eager to do it in the best possible manner, and 
confident of just treatment. Our aim was also to secure 
good laws wherever the National Government had power, 
notably in the Territories, in the District of Columbia, and 
in connection with inter-State commerce. I found the eight- 
hour law a mere farce, the departments rarely enforcing it 
with any degree of efficiency. This I remedied by executive 
action. Unfortunately, thoroughly efficient government 
servants often proved to be the prime offenders so far as 
the enforcement of the eight-hour law was concerned, because 
in their zeal to get good work done for the Government they 
became harsh taskmasters, and declined to consider the 
needs of their fellow-employees who served under them. 

501 



502 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

The more I had studied the subject the more strongly I 
had become convinced that an eight-hour day under the 
conditions of labor in the United States was all that could, 
with wisdom and propriety, be required either by the 
Government or by private employers ; that more than this 
meant, on the average, a decrease in the qualities that tell for 
good citizenship. I finally solved the problem, as far as 
Government employees were concerned, by calling in 
Charles P. Neill, the head of the Labor Bureau ; and, acting 
on his advice, I speedily made the eight-hour law really 
effective. Any man who shirked his work, who dawdled 
and idled, received no mercy ; slackness is even worse than 
harshness ; for exactly as in battle mercy to the coward 
is cruelty to the brave man, so in civil life slackness towards 
the vicious and idle is harshness towards the honest and hard- 
working. 

We passed a good law protecting the lives and health of 
miners in the Territories, and other laws providing for the 
supervision of employment agencies in the District of Colum- 
bia, and protecting the health of motormen and conductors 
on street railways in the District. We practically started 
the Bureau of Mines. We provided for safeguarding 
factory employees in the District against accidents, and for 
the restriction of child labor therein. We passed a work- 
men's compensation law for the protection of Government 
employees ; a law which did not go as far as I wished, but 
which was the best I could get, and which committed the 
Government to the right policy. We provided for an 
investigation of woman and child labor in the United 
States. We incorporated the National Child Labor Com- 
mittee. Where we had most difficulty was with the railway 
companies engaged in inter-State business. We passed 
an act improving safety appliances on railway trains with- 
out much opposition, but we had more trouble with acts 
regulating the hours of labor of railway employees and 
making those railways which were engaged in inter-State 
commerce liable for injuries to or the death of their em- 
ployees while on duty. One important step in connection 
with these latter laws was taken by Attorney-General 



SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL JUSTICE 503 

Moody when, on behalf of the Government, he intervened 
in the case of a wronged employee. It is unjust that a law 
which has been declared public policy by the representatives 
of the people should be submitted to the possibility of nullifi- 
cation because the Government leaves the enforcement of 
it to the private initiative of poor people who have just suf- 
fered some crushing accident. It should be the business of 
the Government to enforce laws of this kind, and to appear 
in court to argue for their constitutionality and proper 
enforcement. Thanks to Moody, the Government assumed 
this position. The first employers' liability law affecting 
inter-State railroads was declared unconstitutional. We 
got through another, which stood the test of the courts. 

The principle to which we especially strove to give ex- 
pression, through these laws and through executive action, 
was that a right is valueless unless reduced from the abstract 
to the concrete. This sounds like a truism. So far from 
being such, the effort practically to apply it was almost 
revolutionary, and gave rise to the bitterest denunciation 
of us by all the big lawyers, and all the big newspaper 
editors, who, whether sincerely or for hire, gave expression 
to the views of the privileged classes. Ever since the Civil 
War very many of the decisions of the courts, not as regards 
ordinary actions between man and man, but as regards the 
application of great governmental policies for social and 
industrial justice, had been in reality nothing but ingenious 
justifications of the theory that these policies were mere 
high-sounding abstractions, and were not to be given practical 
effect. The tendency of the courts had been, in the majority 
of cases, jealously to exert their great power in protecting 
those who least needed protection and hardly to use their 
power at all in the interest of those who most needed pro- 
tection. Our desire was to make the Federal Government 
efficient as an instrument for protecting the rights of 
labor within its province, and therefore to secure and enforce 
judicial decisions which would permit us to make this desire 
effective. Not only some of the Federal judges, but some 
of the State courts invoked the Constitution in a spirit 
of the narrowest legalistic obstruction to prevent the Gov- 



504 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

ernment from acting in defense of labor on inter-State rail- 
ways. In effect, these judges took the view that while Con- 
gress had complete power as regards the goods transported 
by the railways, and could protect wealthy or well-to-do 
owners of these goods, yet that it had no power to protect 
the lives of the men engaged in transporting the goods. 
Such judges freely issued injunctions to prevent the ob- 
struction of traffic in the interest of the property owners, but 
declared unconstitutional the action of the Government in 
seeking to safeguard the men, and the families of the men, 
without whose labor the traffic could not take place. It 
was an instance of the largely unconscious way in which the 
courts had been twisted into the exaltation of property 
rights over human rights, and the subordination of the 
welfare of the laborer when compared with the profit of the 
man for whom he labored. By what I fear my conservative 
friends regarded as frightfully aggressive missionary work, 
which included some uncommonly plain speaking as to 
certain unjust and anti-social judicial decisions, we succeeded 
in largely, but by no means altogether, correcting this view, 
at least so far as the best and most enlightened judges were 
concerned. 

Very much the most important action I took as regards 
labor had nothing to do with legislation, and represented 
executive action which was not required by the Constitu- 
tion. It illustrated as well as anything that I did the theory 
which I have called the Jackson-Lincoln theory of the Presi- 
dency ; that is, that occasionally great national crises 
arise which call for immediate and vigorous executive action, 
and that in such cases it is the duty of the President to 
act upon the theory that he is the steward of the people, 
and that the proper attitude for him to take is that he is 
bound to assume that he has the legal right to do whatever 
the needs of the people demand, unless the Constitution or 
the laws explicitly forbid him to do it. 

Early in the spring of 1902 a universal strike began in 
the anthracite regions. The miners and the operators 
became deeply embittered, and the strike went on through- 
out the summer and the early fall without any sign of reach- 



SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL JUSTICE 505 

ing an end, and with almost complete stoppage of mining. 
In many cities, especially in the East, the heating apparatus 
is designed for anthracite, so that the bituminous coal is 
only a very partial substitute. Moreover, in many regions, 
even in farmhouses, many of the provisions are for burn- 
ing coal and not wood. In consequence, the coal famine 
became a National menace as the winter approached. In 
most big cities and many farming districts east of the Mis- 
sissippi the shortage of anthracite threatened calamity. In 
the populous industrial States, from Ohio eastward, it was 
not merely calamity, but the direst disaster, that was 
threatened. Ordinarily conservative men, men very sensi- 
tive as to the rights of property under normal conditions, 
when faced by this crisis felt, quite rightly, that there 
must be some radical action. The Governor of Massa- 
chusetts and the Mayor of New York both notified me, as 
the cold weather came on, that if the coal famine continued 
the misery throughout the Northeast, and especially in the 
great cities, would become appalling, and the consequent 
public disorder so great that frightful consequences might 
follow. It is not too much to say that the situation which 
confronted Pennsylvania, New York, and New England, 
and to a less degree the States of the Middle West, in 
October, 1902, was quite as serious as if they had been 
threatened by the invasion of a hostile army of overwhelm- 
ing force. 

The big coal operators had banded together, and positively 
refused to take any steps looking toward an accommodation. 
They knew that the suffering among the miners was great ; 
they were confident that if order were kept, and nothing 
further done by the Government, they would win ; and they 
refused to consider that the public had any rights in the 
matter. They were, for the most part, men of unques- 
tionably good private life, and they were merely taking the 
extreme individualistic view of the rights of property and 
the freedom of individual action upheld in the laissez faire 
political economies. The mines were in the State of Pennsyl- 
vania. There was no duty whatever laid upon me by the 
Constitution in the matter, and I had in theory no power to 



5o6 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

act directly unless the Governor of Pennsylvania or the 
Legislature, if it were in session, should notify me that 
Pennsylvania could not keep order, and request me as com- 
mander-in-chief of the army of the United States to inter- 
vene and keep order. 

As long as I could avojd interfering I did so ; but I directed 
the head of the Labor Bureau, Carroll Wright, to make a 
thorough investigation and lay the facts fully before me. As 
September passed without any sign of weakening either 
among the employers or the striking workmen, the situation 
became so grave that I felt I would have to try to do some- 
thing. The thing most feasible was to get both sides to 
agree to a Commission of Arbitration, with a promise to 
accept its findings ; the miners to go to work as soon as the 
commission was appointed, at the old rate of wages. To 
this proposition the miners, headed by John Mitchell, agreed, 
stipulating only that I should have power to name the 
Commission. The operators, however, positively refused. 
They insisted that all that was necessary to do was for 
the State to keep order, using the militia as a police force ; al- 
though both they and the miners asked me to intervene 
under the Inter-State Commerce Law, each side requesting 
that I proceed against the other, and both requests being 
impossible. 

Finally, on October 3, the representatives of both the 
operators and the miners met before me, in pursuance of my 
request. The representatives of the miners included as 
their head and spokesman John Mitchell, who kept his 
temper admirably and showed to much advantage. The 
representatives of the operators, on the contrary, came 
down in a most insolent frame of mind, refused to talk of 
arbitration or other accommodation of any kind, and used 
language that was insulting to the miners and offensive to me. 
They were curiously ignorant of the popular temper; and 
when they went away from the interview they, with much 
pride, gave their own account of it to the papers, exulting 
in the fact that they had "turned down" both the miners 
and the President. 

I refused to accept the rebuff, however, and continued the 



SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL JUSTICE 507 

effort to get an agreement between the operators and the 
miners. I was anxious to get this agreement, because it 
would prevent the necessity of taking the extremely drastic 
action I meditated, and which is hereinafter described. 

Fortunately, this time we were successful. Yet we were 
on the verge of failure, because of self-willed obstinacy on 
the part of the operators. This obstinacy was utterly 
silly from their own standpoint, and well-nigh criminal from 
the standpoint of the people at large. The miners pro- 
posed that I should name the Commission, and that if I 
put on a representative of the employing class I should also 
put on a labor union man. The operators positively de- 
clined to accept the suggestion. They insisted upon my 
naming a Commission of only five men, and specified the 
qualifications these men should have, carefully choosing 
these qualifications so as to exclude those whom it had leaked 
out I was thinking of appointing, including ex-President 
Cleveland. They made the condition that I was to appoint 
one officer of the engineer corps of the army or navy, one 
man with experience of mining, one "man of prominence," 
"eminent as a sociologist," one Federal judge of the Eastern 
District of Pennsylvania, and one mining engineer. 

They positively refused to have me appoint any represen- 
tative of labor, or to put on an extra man. I was desirous 
of putting on the extra man, because Mitchell and the 
other leaders of the miners had urged me to appoint some 
high Catholic ecclesiastic. Most of the miners were Cath- 
olics, and Mitchell and the leaders were very anxious to 
secure peaceful acquiescence by the miners in any decision 
rendered, and they felt that their hands would be strength- 
ened if such an appointment were made. They also, quite 
properly, insisted that there should be one representative 
of labor on the Commission, as all of the others represented 
the propertied classes. The operators, however, absolutely 
refused to acquiesce in the appointment of any represen- 
tative of labor, and also announced that they would refuse 
to accept a sixth man on the Commission ; although they 
spoke much less decidedly on this point. The labor men 
left everything in my hands. 



5o8 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

The final conferences with the representatives of the opera- 
tors took place in my rooms on the evening of October 15. 
Hour after hour went by while I endeavored to make the 
operators through their representatives see that the country 
would not tolerate their insisting upon such conditions ; 
but in vain. The two representatives of the operators were 
Robert Bacon and George W. Perkins. They were entirely 
reasonable. But the operators themselves were entirely un- 
reasonable. They had worked themselves into a frame of 
mind where they were prepared to sacrifice everything and 
see civil war in the country rather than back down and ac- 
quiesce in the appointment of a representative of labor. 
It looked as if a deadlock were inevitable. 

Then, suddenly, after about two hours' argument, it 
dawned on me that they were not objecting to the thing, 
but to the name. I found that they did not mind my 
appointing any man, whether he was a labor man or not, 
so long as he was not appointed as a labor man, or as a 
representative of labor ; they did not object to my exercising 
any latitude I chose in the appointments so long as they 
were made under the headings they had given. I shall never 
forget the mixture of relief and amusement I felt when I 
thoroughly grasped the fact that while they would heroically 
submit to anarchy rather than have Tweedledum, yet if I 
would call it Tweedledee they would accept it with rapture ; 
it gave me an illuminating glimpse into one corner of the 
mighty brains of these "captains of industry." In order 
to carry the great and vital point and secure agreement by 
both parties, all that was necessary for me to do was to 
commit a technical and nominal absurdity with a solemn 
face. This I gladly did. I announced at once that I ac- 
cepted the terms laid down. With this understanding, 
I appointed the labor man I had all along had in view, 
Mr. E. E. Clark, the head of the Brotherhood of Railway 
Conductors, calling him an "eminent sociologist" — a term 
which I doubt whether he had ever previously heard. He 
was a first-class man, whom I afterward put on the Inter- 
State Commerce Commission. I added to the Arbitration 
Commission, on my own authority, a sixth member, in the 



SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL JUSTICE 



509 



person of Bishop Spalding, a Catholic bishop, of Peoria, 111., 
one of the very best men to be found in the entire country. 
The man whom the operators had expected me to appoint 
as the sociologist was Carroll Wright — who really was an 
eminent sociologist. I put him on as recorder of the Com- 
mission, and added him as a 



seventh member as soon as 
the Commission got fairly 
started. In publishing the 
list of the Commissioners, 
when I came to Clark's ap- 
pointment, I added: "As a 
sociologist — the President 
assuming that for the pur- 
poses of such a Commission, 
the term sociologist means 
a man who has thought and 
studied deeply on social 
questions and has practi- 
cally applied his knowl- 
edge." 

The relief of the whole 
country was so great that 
the sudden appearance of 
the head of the Brother- 
hood' of Railway Conduct- 
ors as an "eminent sociol- 
ogist" merely furnished material for puzzled comment on 
the part of the press. It was a most admirable Commission. 
It did a noteworthy work, and its report is a monument in 
the history of the relations of labor and capital in this coun- 
try. The strike, by the way, brought me into contact with 
more than one man who was afterward a valued friend and 
fellow-worker. On the suggestion of Carroll Wright I ap- 
pointed as assistant recorders to the Commission Charles P. 
Neill, whom I afterward made Labor Commissioner, to suc- 
ceed Wright himself, and Mr. Edward A. Moseley. Wilkes- 
Barre was the center of the strike ; and the man in Wilkes- 
Barre who helped me most was Father Curran ; I grew to 




Father Curran. 



5IO THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

know and trust and believe in him, and throughout my term 
in office, and afterward, he was not only my stanch friend, 
but one of the men by whose advice and counsel I profited 
most in matters affecting the welfare of the miners and their 
families. 

I was greatly relieved at the result, for more than one 
reason. Of course, first and foremost, my concern was to 
avert a frightful calamity to the United States. In the 
next place I was anxious to save the great coal operators 
and all of the class of big propertied men, of which they were 
members, from the dreadful punishment which their own 
folly would have brought on them if I had not acted ; and 
one of the exasperating things was that they were so blinded 
that they could not see that I was trying to save them from 
themselves and to avert, not only for their sakes, but for 
the sake of the country, the excesses which would have been 
Indulged In at their expense if they had longer persisted 
In their conduct. 

The great Anthracite Strike of 1902 left an indelible 
impress upon the people of the United States. It showed 
clearly to all wise and far-seeing men that the labor 
problem In this country had entered upon a new phase. 
Industry had grown. Great financial corporations, doing 
a nation-wide and even a world-wide business, had taken 
the place of the smaller concerns of an earlier time. The old 
familiar. Intimate relations between employer and employee 
were passing. A few generations before, the boss had known 
every man In his shop ; he called his men Bill, Tom, Dick, 
John; he Inquired after their wives and babies ; he swapped 
jokes and stories and perhaps a bit of tobacco with them. 
In the small establishment there had been a friendly human 
relationship between employer and employee. 

There was no such relation between the great railway 
magnates, who controlled the anthracite Industry, and the 
one hundred and fifty thousand men who worked In their 
mines, or the half million women and children who were 
dependent upon these miners for their daily bread. Very 
few of these mine workers had ever seen, for instance, 
the president of the Reading Railroad. Had they seen him 



SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL JUSTICE 511 

many of them could not have spoken to him, for tens of 
thousands of the mine workers were recent immigrants 
who did not understand the language which he spoke and 
who spoke a language which he could not understand. 

Again, a few generations ago an American workman could 
have saved money, gone West and taken up a homestead. 
Now the free lands were gone. In earlier days a man who 
began with pick and shovel might have come to own a mine. 
That outlet too was now closed, as regards the immense 
majority, and few, if any, of the one hundred and fifty 
thousand mine workers could ever aspire to enter the small 
circle of men who held in their grasp the great anthracite 
industry. The majority of the men who earned wages in 
the coal industry, if they wished to progress at all, were 
compelled to progress not by ceasing to be wage-earners, 
but by improving the conditions under which all the wage- 
earners in all the industries of the country lived and worked, 
as well, of course, as improving their own individual efficiency. 

Another change which had come about as a result of the 
foregoing was a crass inequality in the bargaining relation 
between the employer and the individual employee standing 
alone. The great coal-mining and coal-carrying companies, 
which employed their tens of thousands, could easily dis- 
pense with the services of any particular miner. The miner, 
on the other hand, however expert, could not dispense with 
the companies. He needed a job ; his wife and children 
would starve if he did not get one. What the miner had to 
sell — his labor — was a perishable commodity; the labor 
of to-day — if not sold to-day — was lost forever. More- 
over, his labor was not like most commodities — a mere 
thing; it was part of a living, breathing human being. The 
workman saw, and all citizens who gave earnest thought to 
the matter saw, that the labor problem was not only an 
economic, but also a moral, a human problem. Individually 
the miners were impotent when they sought to enter a wage- 
contract with the great companies ; they could make fair 
terms only by uniting into trade unions to bargain col- 
lectively. The men were forced to cooperate to secure not 
only their economic, but their simple human rights. They, 



512 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

like other workmen, were compelled by the very conditions 
under which they lived to unite in unions of their industry 
or trade, and these unions were bound to grow in size, in 
strength, and in power for good and evil as the industries 
in which the men were employed grew larger and larger. 

A democracy can be such in fact only if there is some rough 
approximation to similarity in stature among the men com- 
posing it. One of us can deal in our private lives with the 
grocer or the butcher or the carpenter or the chicken 
raiser, or if we are the grocer or carpenter or butcher or 
farmer, we can deal with our customers, because we are all 
of about the same size. Therefore a simple and poor society 
can exist as a democracy on a basis of sheer individualism. 
But a rich and complex industrial society cannot so exist; 
for some individuals, and especially those artificial individ- 
uals called corporations, become so very big that the ordi- 
nary individual is utterly dwarfed beside them, and cannot 
deal with them on terms of equality. It therefore becomes 
necessary for these ordinary individuals to combine in their 
turn, first in order to act in their collective capacity through 
• that biggest of all combinations called the Government, and 
second, to act, also in their own self-defense, through private 
combinations, such as farmers' associations and trade unions. 

This the great coal operators did not see. They did not 
see that their property rights, which they so stoutly defended, 
were of the same texture as were the human rights, which 
they so blindly and hotly denied. They did not see that 
the power which they exercised of representing their stock- 
holders was of the same texture as the power which the union 
leaders demanded of representing the workmen, who had 
democratically elected them. They did not see that the 
right to use one's property as one will can be maintained 
only so long as it is consistent with the maintenance of 
certain fundamental human rights, of the rights to life, 
liberty and the pursuit of happiness, or, as we may restate 
them in these later days, of the rights of the worker to a 
living wage, to reasonable hours of labor, to decent working 
and living conditions, to freedom of thought and speech and 
industrial representation, — in short, to a measure of Indus- 



SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL JUSTICE 513 

trial democracy and, in return for his arduous toil, to a worthy 
and decent life according to American standards. Still 
another thing these great business leaders did not see. They 
did not see that both their interests and the interests of the 
workers must be accommodated, and if need be, subordi- 
nated, to the fundamental permanent interests of the whole 
community. No man and no group of men may so exercise 
their rights as to deprive the nation of the things which are 
necessary and vital to the common life. A strike which ties 
up the coal supplies of a whole section is a strike invested 
with a public interest. 

So great was that public interest in the Coal Strike of 1902, 
so deeply and strongly did I feel the wave of indignation 
which swept over the whole country that had I not succeeded 
in my eflforts to induce the operators to listen to reason, I 
should reluctantly but none the less decisively have taken a 
step which would have brought down upon my head the 
execrations of many of "the captains of industry," as well 
as of sundry " respectable " newspapers who dutifully take 
their cue from them. As a man should be judged by his 
intentions as well as by his actions, I will give here the story 
of the intervention that never happened. 

While the coal operators were exulting over the fact that 
they had "turned down" the miners and the President, there 
arose in all parts of the country an outburst of wrath so 
universal that even so naturally conservative a man 
as Grover Cleveland wrote to me, expressing his sympathy 
with the course I was following, his indignation at the 
conduct of the operators, and his hope that I would devise 
some method of effective action. In my own mind I was 
already planning effective action ; but it was of a very 
drastic character, and I did not wish to take it until the fail- 
ure of all other expedients had rendered it necessary. Above 
all, I did not wish to talk about it until and unless I 
actually acted. I had definitely determined that some- 
how or other act I would, that somehow or other the coal 
famine should be broken. To accomplish this end it was 
necessary that the mines should be run, and, if I could get no 
voluntary agreement between the contending sides, that an 



514 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

Arbitration Commission should be appointed which would 
command such public confidence as to enable me, without 
too much difficulty, to enforce its terms upon both parties. 
Ex-President Cleveland's letter not merely gratified me, 
but gave me the chance to secure him as head of the Arbi- 
tration Commission. I at once wrote him, stating that I 
would very probably have to appoint an Arbitration Com- 
mission or Investigating Commission to look into the matter 
and decide on the rights of the case, whether or not the 
operators asked for or agreed to abide by the decisions 
of such a Commission ; and that I would ask him to accept 
the chief place on the Commission. He answered that he 
would do so. I picked out several first-class men for other 
positions on the Commission. 

Meanwhile the Governor of Pennsylvania had all the 
Pennsylvania militia in the anthracite region, although 
without any effect upon the resumption of mining. The 
method of action upon which I had determined in the last 
resort was to get the Governor of Pennsylvania to ask me 
to keep order. Then I would put in the army under the 
command of some first-rate general. I would instruct this 
general to keep absolute order, taking any steps whatever 
that were necessary to prevent interference by the strikers 
or their sympathizers with men who wanted to work. I 
would also instruct him to dispossess the operators and run 
the mines as a receiver until such time as the Commission 
might make its report, and until I, as President, might issue 
further orders in view of this report. I had to find a man 
who possessed the necessary good sense, judgment, and 
nerve to act in such event. He was ready to hand in the 
person of Major-General Schofield. I sent for him, telling 
him that if I had to make use of him it would be because the 
crisis was only less serious than that of the Civil War, that 
the action taken would be practically a war measure, and 
that if I sent him he must act in a purely military capacity 
under me as commander-in-chief, paying no heed to any 
authority, judicial or otherwise, except mine. He was a 
fine fellow — a most respectable-looking old boy, with side 
whiskers and a black skull-cap, without any of the outward 



SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL JUSTICE 515 

aspect of the conventional military dictator ; butinboth nerve 
and judgment he was all right, and he answered quietly that 
if I gave the order he would take possession of the mines, 
and would guarantee to open them and to run them without 
permitting any interference either by the owners or the 
strikers or anybody else, so long as I told him to stay. I then 
saw Senator Quay, who, like every other responsible man in 
high position, was greatly wrought up over the condition of 
things. I told him that he need be under no alarm as to 
the problem not being solved, that I was going to make 
another effort to get the operators and miners to come to- 
gether, but that I would solve the problem in any event 
and get coal ; that, however, I did not wish to tell him any- 
thing of the details of my intention, but merely to have him 
arrange that whenever I gave the word the Governor of 
Pennsylvania should request me to intervene ; that when 
this was done I would be responsible for all that followed, 
and would guarantee that the coal famine would end forth- 
with. The Senator made no inquiry or comment, and 
merely told me that he in his turn would guarantee that 
the Governor would request my intervention the minute 
I asked that the request be made. 

These negotiations were conducted with the utmost 
secrecy. General Schofield being the only man who knew 
exactly what my plan was, and Senator Quay, two members 
of my Cabinet, and ex-President Cleveland and the other 
men whom I proposed to put on the Commission, the only 
other men who knew that I had a plan. As I have above 
outlined, my efforts to bring about an agreement between the 
operators and miners were finally successful. I was glad not 
to have to take possession of the mines on my own initiative 
by means of General Schofield and the regulars. I was all 
ready to act, and would have done so without the slightest 
hesitation or a moment's delay if the negotiations had fallen 
through. And my action would have been entirely effective. 
But it is never well to take drastic action if the result can 
be achieved with equal efficiency in less drastic fashion ; 
and, although this was a minor consideration, I was per- 
sonally saved a good deal of future trouble by being able 



5i6 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

to avoid this drastic action. At the time I should have 
been almost unanimously supported. With the famine 
upon them the people would not have tolerated any conduct 
that would have thwarted what I was doing. Probably no 
man in Congress, and no man In the Pennsylvania State 
Legislature, would have raised his voice against me. Al- 
though there would have been plenty of muttering, nothing 
would have been done to Interfere with the solution of the 
problem which I had devised, until the solution was accom- 
plished and the problem ceased to he a problem. Once this 
was done, and when people were no longer afraid of a coal 
famine, and began to forget that they ever had been afraid 
of it, and to be Indifferent as regards the consequences to 
those who put an end to It, then my enemies would have 
plucked up heart and begun a campaign against me. I 
doubt if they could have accomplished much anyway, for 
the only effective remedy against me would have been Im- 
peachment, and that they would not have ventured to try.^ 

1 One of my appointees on the Anthracite Strike Commission was Judge George 
Gray, of Delaware, a Democrat whose standing in the country was second only to 
that of Grover Cleveland. A year later he commented on my action as follows : 

"I have no hesitation in saying that the President of the United States was con- 
fronted in October, 1902, by the existence of a crisis more grave and threatening 
than any that had occurred since the Civil War. I mean that the cessation of mining 
in the anthracite country, brought about by the dispute between the miners and 
those who controlled the greatest natural monopoly in this country and perhaps in 
the world, had brought upon more than one-half of the American people a condition 
of deprivation of one of the necessaries of life, and the probable continuance of the 
dispute threatened not only the comfort and health, but the safety and good order, 
of the nation. He was without legal or constitutional power to interfere, but his 
position as President of the United States gave him an influence, a leadership, as 
first citizen of the republic, that enabled him to appeal to the patriotism and good 
sense of the parties to the controversy and to place upon them the moral coercion 
of public opinion to agree to an arbitrament of the strike then existing and threaten- 
ing consequences so direful to the whole country. He acted promptly and coura- 
geously, and in so doing averted the dangers to which I have alluded. 

"So far from interfering or infringing upon property rights, the President's 
action tended to conserve them. The peculiar situation, as regards the anthracite 
coal interest, was that they controlled a natural monopoly of a product necessary 
to the comfort and to the very life of a large portion of the pople. A prolonged 
deprivation of the enjoyment of this necessary of life would have tended to precipi- 
tate an attack upon these property rights of which you speak ; for, after all, it is 
vain to deny that this property, so peculiar in its conditions, and which is properly 
spoken of as a natural monopoly, is affected with a public interest. 

"I do not think that any President ever acted more wisely, courageously or 
promptly in a national crisis. Mr. Roosevelt deserves unstinted praise for what he 
did." 



SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL JUSTICE 517 

They would doubtless have acted precisely as they acted 
as regards the acquisition of the Panama Canal Zone in 
1903, and the stoppage of the panic of 1907 by my action in 
the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company matter. Nothing 
could have made the American people surrender the canal 
zone. But after it was an accomplished fact, and the canal 
was under way, then they settled down to comfortable 
acceptance of the accomplished fact, and as their own inter- 
ests were no longer in jeopardy, they paid no heed to the men 
who attacked me because of what I had done — and also 
continue to attack me, although they are exceedingly careful 
not to propose to right the "wrong," in the only proper way 
if it really was a wrong, by replacing the old Republic of 
Panama under the tyranny of Colombia and giving Colombia 
sole or joint ownership of the canal itself. In the case of 
the panic of 1907 (as in the case of Panama), what I did was 
not only done openly, but depended for its eflFect upon being 
done openly and with the widest advertisement. Nobody 
in Congress ventured to make an objection at the time. No 
serious leader outside made any objection. The one concern 
of everybody was to stop the panic, and everybody was over- 
joyed that I was willing to take the responsibility of stopping 
it upon my own shoulders. But a few months afterward, 
the panic was a thing of the past. People forgot the fright- 
ful condition of alarm in which they had been. They no 
longer had a personal interest in preventing any interference 
with the stoppage of the panic. Then the men who had not 
dared to raise their voices until all danger was past came 
bravely forth from their hiding places and denounced the 
action which had saved them. They had kept a hushed 
silence when there was danger ; they made clamorous outcry 
when there was safety in doing so. 

Just the same course would have been followed in con- 
nection with the Anthracite Coal Strike if I had been 
obliged to act in the fashion I intended to act had I failed to 
secure a voluntary agreement between the miners and the 
operators. Even as it was, my action was remembered with 
rancor by the heads of the great monied interests; and as 
time went by was assailed with constantly increasing vigor 



5i8 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

by the newspapers these men controlled. Had I been 
forced to take possession of the mines, these men and the 
politicians hostile to me would have waited until the popular 
alarm was over and the popular needs met, just as they 
waited in the case of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company ; 
and then they would have attacked me precisely as they did 
attack me as regards the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company. 

Of course, in labor controversies it was not always 
possible to champion the cause of the workers, because in 
many cases strikes were called which were utterly unwar- 
ranted and were fought by methods which cannot be too 
harshly condemned. No straightforward man can believe, 
and no fearless man will assert, that a trade union is always 
right. That man is an unworthy public servant who by 
speech or silence, by direct statement or cowardly evasion, 
invariably throws the weight of his influence on the side of 
the trade union, whether it is right or wrong. It has 
occasionally been my duty to give utterance to the feelings 
of all right thinking men by expressing the most emphatic 
disapproval of unwise or even immoral actions by represen- 
tatives of labor. The man is no true democrat, and if an 
American, is unworthy of the traditions of his country who, 
in problems calling for the exercise of a moral judgment, 
fails to take his stand on conduct and not on class. There are 
good and bad wage-workers just as there are good and bad 
employers, and good and bad men of small means and of 
large means alike. 

But a willingness to do equal and exact justice to all 
citizens, irrespective of race, creed, section or economic in- 
terest and position, does not imply a failure to recognize the 
enormous economic, political and moral possibilities of the 
trade union. Just as democratic government cannot be 
condemned because of errors and even crimes committed 
by men democratically elected, so trade-unionism must not 
be condemned because of errors or crimes of occasional 
trade-union leaders. The problem lies deeper. While we 
must repress all illegalities and discourage all immoralities, 
whether of labor organizations or of corporations, we must 
recognize the fact that to-day the organization of labor into 



SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL JUSTICE 519 

trade unions and federations is necessary, is beneficent, 
and is one of the greatest possible agencies in the attainment 
of a true industrial, as well as a true political, democracy 
in the United States. 

This is a fact which many well-intentioned people even 
to-day do not understand. They do not understand that 
the labor problem is a human and a moral as well as an eco- 
nomic problem ; that a fall in wages, an increase in hours, a 
deterioration of labor conditions mean wholesale moral as 
well as economic degeneration, and the needless sacrifice 
of human lives and human happiness, while a rise of wages, a 
lessening of hours, a bettering of conditions, mean an 
intellectual, moral and social uplift of millions of American 
men and women. There are employers to-day who, like the 
great coal operators, speak as though they were lords of these 
countless armies of Americans, who toil in factory, in shop, 
in mill and in the dark places under the earth. They 
fail to see that all these men have the right and the duty to 
combine to protect themselves and their families from want 
and degradation. They fail to see that the Nation and the 
Government, within the range of fair play and a just ad- 
ministration of the law, must inevitably sympathize with 
the men who have nothing but their wages, with the men 
who are struggling for a decent life, as opposed to men, 
however honorable, who are merely fighting for larger profits 
and an autocratic control of big business. Each man 
should have all he earns, whether by brain or body ; and the 
director, the great industrial leader, is one of the greatest 
of earners, and should have a proportional reward; but no 
man should live on the earnings of another, and there should 
not be too gross inequality between service and reward. 

There are many men to-day, men of integrity and intelli- 
gence, who honestly believe that we must go back to the labor 
conditions of half a century ago. They are opposed to trade 
unions, root and branch. They note the unworthy conduct 
of many labor leaders, they find instances of bad work by 
union men, of a voluntary restriction of output, of vexa- 
tious and violent strikes, of jurisdictional disputes between 
unions which often disastrously involve the best intentioned 



520 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

and fairest of employers. All these things occur and 
should be repressed. But the same critic of the trade union 
might find equal cause of complaint against individual 
employers of labor, or even against great associations of 
manufacturers. He might find many instances of an un- 
warranted cutting of wages, of flagrant violations of factory 
laws and tenement house laws, of the deliberate and sys- 
tematic cheating of employees by means of truck stores, of 
the speeding up of work to a point which is fatal to the health 
of the workman, of the sweating of foreign-born workers, of 
the drafting of feeble little children into dusty workshops, of 
black-listing, of putting spies into union meetings and of 
the employment in strike times of vicious and desperate 
rufiians, who are neither better nor worse than are the thugs 
who are occasionally employed by unions under the sinister 
name, "entertainment committees." I believe that the 
overwhelming majority, both of workmen and of employers, 
are law-abiding, peaceful, and honorable citizens, and I do 
not think that it is just to lay up the errors and wrongs of 
individuals to the entire group to which they belong. I also 
think — and this is a belief which has been borne upon me 
through many years of practical experience — that the 
trade union is growing constantly in wisdom as well as in 
power, and is becoming one of the most efficient agencies 
toward the solution of our industrial problems, the elimina- 
tion of poverty and of industrial disease and accidents, the 
lessening of unemployment, the achievement of industrial 
democracy and the attainment of a larger measure of social 
and industrial justice. 

If I were a factory employee, a workman on the railroads 
or a wage-earner of any sort, I would undoubtedly join the 
union of my trade. If I disapproved of its policy, I would 
join in order to fight that policy; if the union leaders were 
dishonest, I would join in order to put them out. I believe 
in the union and I believe that all men who are benefited 
by the union are morally bound to help to the extent of their 
power in the common interests advanced by the union. 
Nevertheless, irrespective of whether a man should or should 
not, and does or does not, join the union of his trade, all 



SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL JUSTICE 521 

the rights, privileges and immunities of that man as an 
American and as a citizen should be safegurded and upheld 
by the law. We dare not make an outlaw of any individual 
or any group, whatever his or its opinions or professions. 
The non-unionist, like the unionist, must be protected in all 
his legal rights by the full weight and power of the law. 

This question came up before me in the shape of the right 
of a non-union printer named Miller to hold his position in 
the Government Printing Ofhce. As I said before, I believe 
in trade unions. I always prefer to see a union shop. But 
my private preferences cannot control my public actions. 
The Government can recognize neither union men nor non- 
union men as such, and is bound to treat both exactly alike. 
In the Government Printing Office not many months prior 
to the opening of the Presidential campaign of 1904, when I 
was up for reelection, I discovered that a man had been dis- 
missed because he did not belong to the union. I reinstated 
him. Mr. Gompers, the President of the American Federa- 
tion of Labor, with various members of the executive council 
of that body, called upon me to protest on September 29, 
1903, and I answered them as follows : 

"I thank you and your committee for your courtesy, and 
I appreciate the opportunity to meet with you. It will al- 
ways be a pleasure to see you or any representatives of your 
organizations or of your Federation as a whole. 

"As regards the Miller case, I have little to add to what 
I have already said. In dealing with it I ask you to re- 
member that I am dealing purely with the relation of the 
Government to its employees. I must govern my action by 
the laws of the land, which I am sworn to administer, and 
which differentiate any case in which the Government of 
the United States is a party from all other cases whatsoever. 
These laws are enacted for the benefit of the whole people, 
and cannot and must not be construed as permitting dis- 
crimination against some of the people. I am President of 
all the people of the United States, without regard to creed, 
color, birthplace, occupation or social condition. My aim 
is to do equal and exact justice as among them all. In the 
employment and dismissal of men in the Government service 




Copyright by Underwood and Underwood. 

The Coal Miners. 



SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL JUSTICE 523 

I can no more recognize the fact that a man does or does not 
belong to a union as being for or against him than I can rec- 
ognize the fact that he is a Protestant or a CathoHc, a Jew 
or a Gentile, as being for or against him. 

"In the communications sent me by various labor or- 
ganizations protesting against the retention of Miller in 
the Government Printing Office, the grounds alleged are 
twofold: I, that he is a non-union man; 2, that he is not 
personally fit. The question of his personal fitness is one 
to be settled in the routine of administrative detail, and 
cannot be allowed to conflict with or to complicate the larger 
question of governmental discrimination for or against him 
or any other man because he is or is not a member of a union. 
This is the only question now before me for decision ; and 
as to this my decision is final." 

Because of things I have done on behalf of justice to the 
workingman, I have often been called a Socialist. Usually 
I have not taken the trouble even to notice the epithet. 
I am not afraid of names, and I am not one of those who fear 
to do what is right because some one else will confound 
me with partisans with whose principles I am not in accord. 
Moreover, I know that many American Socialists are high- 
minded and honorable citizens, who in reality are merely 
radical social reformers. They are oppressed by the bru- 
talities and industrial injustices which we see everywhere 
about us. When I recall how often I have seen Socialists 
and ardent non-Socialists working side by side for some 
specific measure of social or industrial reform, and how I 
have found opposed to them on the side of privilege many 
shrill reactionaries who insist on calling all reformers Social- 
ists, I refuse to be panic-stricken by having this title mis- 
takenly applied to me. 

None the less, without impugning their motives, I do 
disagree most emphatically with both the fundamental 
philosophy and the proposed remedies of the Marxian 
Socialists. These Socialists are unalterably opposed to 
our whole industrial system. They believe that the payment 
of wages means everywhere and inevitably an exploitation 
of the laborer by the employer, and that this leads inevitably 



524 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

to a class war between those two groups, or, as they would 
say, between the capitalists and the proletariat. They 
assert that this class war is already upon us and can only 
be ended when capitalism is entirely destroyed and all the 
machines, mills, mines, railroads and other private property 
used in production are confiscated, expropriated or taken 
over by the workers. They do not as a rule claim — although 
some of the sinister extremists among them do — that this class 
war is a war of blood and bullets, but they do claim that there 
is and must be a continual struggle between two great classes, 
whose interests are opposed and cannot be reconciled. In this 
war they insist that the whole government — National, 
State and local — is on the side of the employers and is 
used by them against the workmen, and that our law and 
even our common morality are class weapons, like a police- 
man's club or a Gatling gun. 

I have never believed, and do not to-day believe, that such 
a class war is upon us, or need ever be upon us ; nor do I 
believe that the interests of wage-earners and employers can- 
not be harmonized, compromised and adjusted. It would 
be idle to deny that wage-earners have certain different 
economic interests from, let us say, manufacturers or im- 
porters, just as farmers have different interests from sailors, 
and fishermen from bankers. There is no reason why any of 
these economic groups should not consult their group interests 
by any legitimate means and with due regard to the common, 
overlying interests of all. I do not even deny that the 
majority of wage-earners, because they have less property 
and less industrial security than others and because they do 
not own the machinery with which they work (as does the 
farmer) are perhaps in greater need of acting together than 
are other groups in the community. But I do insist (and I 
believe that the great majority of wage-earners take the same 
view) that employers and employees have overwhelming 
interests in common, both as partners in industry and as 
citizens of the Republic, and that where these interests are 
apart they can be adjusted by so altering our laws and their 
interpretation as to secure to all members of the community 
social and industrial justice. 



SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL JUSTICE 525 

I have always maintained that our worst revolutionaries 
to-day are those reactionaries who do not see and will not 
admit that there is any need for change. Such men seem 
to believe that the four and a half million Progressive voters, 
who in 191 2 registered their solemn protest against our social 
and industrial injustices, are " anarchists," who are not willing 
to let ill enough alone. If these reactionaries had lived at 
an earlier time in our history, they would have advocated 
Sedition Laws, opposed free speech and free assembly, and 
voted against free schools, free access by settlers to the 
public lands, mechanics' lien laws, the prohibition of truck 
stores and the abolition of imprisonment for debt ; and they 
are the men who to-day oppose minimum wage laws, in- 
surance of workmen against the ills of industrial life and the 
reform of our legislatures and our courts, which can alone 
render such measures possible. Some of these reactionaries 
are not bad men, but merely shortsighted and belated. It 
is these reactionaries, however, who, by "standing pat" 
on industrial injustice, incite inevitably to industrial revolt, 
and it is only we who advocate political and industrial de- 
mocracy who render possible the progress of our American 
industry on large constructive lines with a minimum of 
friction because with a maximum of justice. 

Everything possible should be done to secure the wage- 
workers fair treatment. There should be an Increased wage 
for the worker of increased productiveness. Everything 
possible should be done against the capitalist who strives, 
not to reward special efficiency, but to use it as an excuse 
for reducing the reward of moderate efficiency. The 
capitalist is an unworthy citizen who pays the efficient man 
no more than he has been content to pay the average man, 
and nevertheless reduces the wage of the average man ; and 
eifort should be made by the Government to check and pun- 
ish him. When labor-saving machinery is introduced, special 
care should be taken — by the Government If necessary — 
to see that the wage-worker gets his share of the benefit, 
and that It Is not all absorbed by the employer or capitalist. 
The following case, which has come to my knowledge, Illus- 
trates what I mean. A number of new machines were in- 



526 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

stalled in a certain shoe factory, and as a result there was 
a heavy increase in production even though there was no 
increase in the labor force. Some of the workmen were 
instructed in the use of these machines by special demon- 
strators sent out by the makers of the machines. These 
men, by reason of their special aptitudes and the fact 
that they were not called upon to operate the machines 
continuously nine hours every day, week in and week out, 
but only for an hour or so at special times, were naturally 
able to run the machines at their maximum capacity. 
When these demonstrators had left the factory, and the com- 
pany's own employees had become used to operating the 
machines at a fair rate of speed, the foreman of the establish- 
ment gradually speeded the machines and demanded a 
larger and still larger output, constantly endeavoring to drive 
the men on to greater exertions. Even with a slightly less 
maximum capacity, the introduction of this machinery 
resulted in a great increase over former production with 
the same amount of labor ; and so great were the profits 
from the business in the following two years as to equal the 
total capitalized stock of the company. But not a cent 
got into the pay envelope of the workmen beyond what they 
had formerly been receiving before the introduction of this 
new machinery, notwithstanding that it had meant an added 
strain, physical and mental, upon their energies, and that 
they were forced to work harder than ever before. The 
whole of the increased profits remained with the company. 
Now this represented an "increase of efficiency," with a 
positive decrease of social and industrial justice. The in- 
crease of prosperity which came from increase of production 
in no way benefited the wage-workers. I hold that they 
were treated with gross injustice ; and that society, acting 
if necessary through the Government, in such a case should 
bend its energies to remedy such injustice ; and I will support 
any proper legislation that will aid in securing the desired end. 
The wage-worker should not only receive fair treatment; 
he should give fair treatment. In order that prosperity 
may be passed around it is necessary that the prosperity 
exist. In order that labor shall receive its fair share in the 



SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL JUSTICE 527 

division of reward it is necessary that there be a reward to 
divide. Any proposal to reduce efficiency by insisting 
that the most efficient shall be limited in their output to 
what the least efficient can do, is a proposal to limit by so 
much production, and therefore to impoverish by so much 
the public, and specifically to reduce the amount that can 
be divided among the producers. This is all wrong. Our 
protest must be against unfair division of the reward for 
production. Every encouragement should be given the 
business man, the employer, to make his business prosperous, 
and therefore to earn more money for himself; and in like 
fashion every encouragement should be given the efficient 
workman. We must always keep in mind that to reduce the 
amount of production serves merely to reduce the amount 
that is to be divided, is in no way permanently efficient as a 
protest against unequal distribution and is permanently 
detrimental to the entire community. But increased pro- 
ductiveness is not secured by excessive labor amid unhealthy 
surroundings. The contrary is true. Shorter hours, and 
healthful conditions, and opportunity for the wage-worker to 
make more money, and the chance for enjoyment as well as 
work, all add to efficiency. My contention is that there 
should be no penalization of efficient productiveness, brought 
about under healthy conditions ; but that every increase of 
production brought about by an increase in efficiency should 
benefit all the parties to it, including wage-workers as 
well as employers or capitalists, men who work with their 
hands as well as men who work with their heads. 

With the Western Federation of Miners I more than once 
had serious trouble. The leaders of this organization had 
preached anarchy, and certain of them were indicted for 
having practiced murder in the case of Governor Steunenberg, 
of Idaho. On one occasion in a letter or speech I coupled 
condemnation of these labor leaders and condemnation of 
certain big capitalists, describing them all alike as "unde- 
sirable citizens." This gave great offense to both sides. 
The open attack upon me was made for the most part 
either by the New York newspapers which were frankly 
representatives of Wall Street, or else by those so-called — 



528 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

and miscalled — Socialists who had anarchistic leanings. 
Many of the latter sent me open letters of denunciation, 
and to one of them I responded as follows : 

The White House, Washington, 
April 22, 1907. 
Dear Sir: 

I have received your letter of the 19th instant, in which 
you enclose the draft of the formal letter which is to follow. 
I have been notified that several delegations, bearing similar 
requests, are on the way hither. In the letter you, on behalf 
of the Cook County Moyer-Haywood conference, protest 
against certain language I used in a recent letter which you 
assert to be designed to influence the course of justice in 
the case of the trial for murder of Messrs. Moyer and Hay- 
wood. I entirely agree with you that it is improper to 
endeavor to influence the course of justice, whether by 
threats or in any similar manner. For this reason I have 
regretted most deeply the actions of such organizations as 
your own in undertaking to accomplish this very result in 
the very case of which you speak. For instance, your letter is 
headed "Cook County Moyer-Haywood-Pettibone Confer- 
ence," with the headlines: ''''Death — cannot — will not — 
and shall not claim our brothers !" This shows that you and 
your associates are not demanding a fair trial, or working for 
a fair trial, but are announcing in advance that the verdict 
shall only be one way and that you will not tolerate any 
other verdict. Such action is flagrant in its impropriety, 
and I join heartily in condemning it. 

But it is a simple absurdity to suppose that because 
any man is on trial for a given offense he is therefore to 
be freed from all criticism upon his general conduct and 
manner of life. In my letter to which you object I referred 
to a certain prominent financier, Mr. Harriman, on the 
one hand, and to Messrs Moyer, Haywood and Debs on 
the other, as being equally undesirable citizens. It is as 
foolish to assert that this was designed to influence the trial 
of Moyer and Haywood as to assert that it was designed to 
influence the suits that have been brought against Mr. 



SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL JUSTICE 529 

Harriman. I neither expressed nor indicated any opinion 
as to whether Messrs. Moyer and Haywood were guilty 
of the murder of Governor Steunenberg. If they are guilty, 
they certainly ought to be punished. If they are not guilty, 
they certainly ought not to be punished. But no possible 
outcome either of the trial or the suits can affect my judg- 
ment as to the undesirability of the type of citizenship of 
those whom I mentioned. Messrs. Moyer, Haywood, and 
Debs stand as representatives of those men who have done 
as much to discredit the labor movement as the worst specu- 
lative financiers or most unscrupulous employers of labor 
and debauchers of legislatures have done to discredit honest 
capitalists and fair-dealing business men. They stand as 
the representatives of those men who by their public utter- 
ances and manifestoes, by the utterances of the papers they 
control or inspire, and by the words and deeds of those 
associated with or subordinated to them, habitually appear 
as guilty of incitement to or apology for bloodshed and 
violence. If this does not constitute undesirable citizenship, 
then there can never be any undesirable citizens. The men 
whom I denounce represent the men who have abandoned 
that legitimate movement for the uplifting of labor, with 
which I have the most hearty sympathy ; they have adopted 
practices which cut them off from those who lead this legiti- 
mate movement. In every way I shall support the law- 
abiding and upright representatives of labor; and in no 
way can I better support them than by drawing the sharpest 
possible line between them on the one hand, and, on the 
other hand, those preachers of violence who are themselves 
the worst foes of the honest laboring man. 

Let me repeat my deep regret that any body of men 
should so far forget their duty to the country as to endeavor 
by the formation of societies and in other ways to influence 
the course of justice in this matter. I have received many 
such letters as yours. Accompanying them were news- 
paper clippings announcing demonstrations, parades, and 
mass-meetings designed to show that the representatives 
of labor, without regard to the facts, demand the acquittal 
of Messrs. Haywood and Moyer. Such meetings can, of 



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SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL JUSTICE 531 

course, be designed only to coerce court or jury in rendering 
a verdict, and tiiey therefore deserve all the condemnation 
which you in your letters say should be awarded to those 
who endeavor improperly to influence the course of justice. 

You would, of course, be entirely within your rights 
if you merely announced that you thought Messrs. Moyer 
and Haywood were " desirable citizens " — though in such case 
I should take frank issue with you and should say that, 
wholly without regard to whether or not they are guilty of 
the crime for which they are now being tried, they represent 
as thoroughly undesirable a type of citizenship as can be 
found in this country ; a type which, in the letter to which 
you so unreasonably take exception, I showed not to be con- 
fined to any one class, but to exist among some representatives 
of great capitalists as well as among some representatives 
of wage-workers. In that letter I condemned both types. 
Certain representatives of the great capitalists in turn con- 
demned me for including Mr. Harriman in my condemnation 
of Messrs. Moyer and Haywood. Certain of the repre- 
sentatives of labor in their turn condemned me because I 
included Messrs. Moyer and Haywood as undesirable citizens 
together with Mr. Harriman. I am as profoundly indifferent 
to the condemnation in one case as in the other. I challenge 
as a right the support of all good Americans, whether wage- 
workers or capitalists, whatever their occupation or creed, 
or in whatever portion of the country they live, when I con- 
demn both the types of bad citizenship which I have held up 
to reprobation. It seems to be a mark of utter insincerity to 
fail thus to condemn both ; and to apologize for either robs 
the man thus apologizing of all right to condemn any wrong- 
doing in any man, rich or poor, in public or in private life. 

You say you ask for a " square deal " for Messrs. Moyer 
and Haywood. So do I. When I say " square deal," I 
mean a square deal to every one ; it is equally a violation 
of the policy of the square deal for a capitalist to pro- 
test against denunciation of a capitalist who is guilty 
of wrongdoing and for a labor leader to protest against 
the denunciation of a labor leader who has been guilty 
of wrongdoing. I stand for equal justice to both ; and so 



532 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

far as in my power lies I shall uphold justice, whether the 
man accused of guilt has behind him the wealthiest corpora- 
tions, the greatest aggregations of riches in the country, 
or whether he has behind him the most influential labor 
organizations in the country. 

I treated anarchists and the bomb-throwing and dyna- 
miting gentry precisely as I treated other criminals. Murder 
is murder. It is not rendered one whit better by the allega- 
tion that it is committed on behalf of "a cause." It is true 
that law and order are not all-sufRcient ; but they are essen- 
tial ; lawlessness and murderous violence must be quelled 
before any permanence of reform can be obtained. Yet 
when they have been quelled, the beneficiaries of the en- 
forcement of law must in their turn be taught that law 
is upheld as a means to the enforcement of justice, and that 
we will not tolerate its being turned into an engine of in- 
justice and oppression. The fundamental need in dealing 
with our people, whether laboring men or others, is not 
charity but justice; we must all work in common for the 
common end of helping each and all, in a spirit of the 
sanest, broadest and deepest brotherhood. 

It was not always easy to avoid feeling very deep anger 
with the selfishness and short-sightedness shown both by 
the representatives of certain employers' organizations and 
by certain great labor federations or unions. One such 
employers' association was called the National Association 
of Manufacturers. Extreme though the attacks sometimes 
made upon me by the extreme labor organizations were, 
they were not quite as extreme as the attacks made upon 
me by the head of the National Association of Manufactur- 
ers, and as regards their attitude toward legislation I came 
to the conclusion toward the end of my term that the latter 
had actually gone further the wrong way than did the former 
— and the former went a good distance also. The oppo- 
sition of the National Association of Manufacturers to 
every rational and moderate measure for benefiting working- 
men, such as measures abolishing child labor, or securing 
workmen's compensation, caused me real and grave concern ; 



SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL JUSTICE 533 

for I felt that it was ominous of evil for the whole country 
to have men who ought to stand high in wisdom and in guid- 
ing force take a course and use language of such reactionary 
type as directly to incite revolution — for this is what the 
extreme reactionary always does. 

Often I was attacked by the two sides at once. In the 
spring of 1906 I received in the same mail a letter from a very 
good friend of mine who thought that I had been unduly hard 
on some labor men, and a letter from another friend, the 
head of a great corporation, who complained about me for 
both favoring labor and speaking against large fortunes. 
My answers ran as follows : 

April 26, 1906. 
"Personal. 

My dear Doctor: 

In one of my last letters to you I enclosed you a copy of a 
letter of mine, in which I quoted from [So and so's] advocacy 
of murder. You may be interested to know that he and his 
brother Socialists — in reality anarchists — of the frankly 
murderous type have been violently attacking my speech 
because of my allusion to the sympathy expressed for murder. 
In The Socialist^ of Toledo, Ohio, of April 21st, for in- 
stance, the attack [on me] is based specifically on the follow- 
ing paragraph of my speech, to which he takes violent ex- 
ception : 

We can no more and no less afford to condone evil 
in the man of capital than evil in the man of no capital. 
The wealthy man who exults because there is a failure of 
justice in the effort to bring some trust magnate to an account 
for his misdeeds is as bad as, and no worse than, the so-called 
labor leader who clamorously strives to excite a foul class feel- 
ing on behalf of some other labor leader who is implicated 
in murder. One attitude is as bad as the other, and no 
worse; in each case the accused is entitled to exact justice; 
and in neither case is there need of action by others which 
can be construed into an expression of sympathy for crime. 

Remember that this crowd of labor leaders have done all 
in their power to overawe the executive and the courts of 



534 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

Idaho on behalf of men accused of murder, and beyond 
question inciters of murder in the past." 

April 26, 1906. 
"Afy dear Judge : 

I wish the papers had given more prominence to what 
I said as to the murder part of my speech. But oh, my 
dear sir, I utterly and radically disagree with you in what 
you say about large fortunes. I wish it were in my power to 
devise some scheme to make it increasingly difficult to heap 
them up beyond a certain amount. As the difficulties in 
the way of such a scheme are very great, let us at least pre- 
vent their being bequeathed after death or given during 
life to any one man in excessive amount. 

You and other capitalist friends, on one side, shy off at 
what I say against them. Have you seen the frantic articles 
against me by [the anarchists and] the Socialists of the bomb- 
throwing persuasion, on the other side, because of what I 
said in my speech in reference to whose who, in effect, advo- 
cate murder ^. " 

On another occasion I was vehemently denounced in 
certain capitalistic papers because I had a number of labor 
leaders, including miners from Butte, lunch with me at 
the White House ; and this at the very time that the 
Western Federation of Miners was most ferocious in its 
denunciation of me because of what it alleged to be my un- 
friendly attitude toward labor. To one of my critics I set 
forth my views in the following letter : 

November 26, 1903. 
" I have your letter of the 25th instant, with enclosure. 
These men, not all of whom were miners, by the way, came 
here and were at lunch with me, in company with Mr. 
Carroll D. Wright, Mr. Wayne MacVeagh, and Secretary 
Cortelyou. They are as decent a set of men as can be. 
They all agreed entirely with me in my denunciation of what 
had been done in the Coeur d'Alene country; and it 
appeared that some of them were on the platform with 



SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL JUSTICE 535 

me when I denounced this type of outrage three years ago 
in Butte. There is not one man who was here, who, I be- 
lieve, was in any way, shape or form responsible for 
such outrages. I find that the ultra-Socialistic members of 
the unions in Butte denounced these men for coming here, 
in a manner as violent — and I may say as irrational — as 
the denunciation [by the capitalistic writer] in the article 
you sent me. Doubtless the gentleman of whom you speak 
as your general manager is an admirable man. I, of course, 
was not alluding to him ; but I most emphatically was 
alluding to men who write such articles as that you sent me. 
These articles are to be paralleled by the similar articles in 
the Populist and Socialist papers when two years ago I 
had at dinner at one time Pierpont Morgan, and at another 
time J. J. Hill, and at another, Harriman, and at another 
time Schiff. Furthermore, they could be paralleled by the 
articles in the same type of paper which at the time of the 
Miller incident in the Printing Office were in a condition of 
nervous anxiety because I met the labor leaders to discuss it. 
It would have been a great misfortune if I had not met them ; 
and it would have been an even greater misfortune if after 
meeting them I had yielded to their protests in the matter. 

You say in your letter that you know that I am " on 
record " as opposed to violence. Pardon my saying that 
this seems to me not the right way to put the matter, if 
by " record " you mean utterance and not action. Aside 
from what happened when I was Governor in connection, 
for instance, with the Croton dam strike riots, all you have 
to do is to turn back to what took place last June in Arizona 
— and you can find out about it from [Mr. X] of New York. 
The miners struck, violence followed, and the Arizona 
Territorial authorities notified me they could not grapple 
with the situation. Within twenty minutes of the receipt 
of the telegram, orders were issued to the nearest available 
troops, and twenty-four hours afterwards General Baldwin 
and his regulars were on the ground, and twenty-four 
hours later every vestige of disorder had disappeared. 
The Miners' Federation in their meeting, I think at Denver, 
a short while afterwards, passed resolutions denouncing 



536 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

me. I do not know whether the Mining and Engineering 
Journal paid any heed to this incident or knew of it. If 
the Journal did, I suppose it can hardly have failed to 
understand that to put an immediate stop to rioting by the 
use of the United States army is a fact of importance beside 
which the criticism of my having " labor leaders " to lunch, 
shrinks into the same insignificance as the criticism in a 
different type of paper about my having " trust magnates " to 
lunch. While I am President I wish the labor man to feel 
that he has the same right of access to me that the capitalist 
has ; that the doors swing open as easily to the wage-worker 
as to the head of a big corporation — and no easier. Any- 
thing else seems to be not only un-American, but as sympto- 
matic of an attitude which will cost grave trouble if per- 
severed in. To discriminate against labor men from Butte 
because there is reason to believe that rioting has been excited 
in other districts by certain labor unions, or individuals 
in labor unions in Butte, would be to adopt precisely the 
attitude of those who desire me to discriminate against all 
capitalists in Wall Street because there are plenty of capi- 
talists in Wall Street who have been guilty of bad financial 
practices and who have endeavored to override or evade 
the laws of the land. In my judgment, the only safe attitude 
for a private citizen, and still more for a public servant, to 
assume, is that he will draw the line on conduct, discriminat- 
ing against neither corporation nor union as such, nor in 
favor of either as such, but endeavoring to make the decent 
member of the union and the upright capitalists alike feel 
that they are bound, not only by self-interest, but by every 
consideration of principle and duty to stand together on the 
matters of most moment to the nation." 

On another of the various occasions when I had labor 
leaders to dine at the White House, my critics were rather 
shocked because I had John Morley to meet them. The 
labor leaders in question included the heads of the various 
railroad brotherhoods, men like Mr. Morrissey, in whose 
sound judgment and high standard of citizenship I had 
peculiar confidence ; and I asked Mr. Morley to meet them 



SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL JUSTICE 537 

because they represented the exact type of American 
citizen with whom I thought he ought to be brought in 
contact. 

One of the devices sometimes used by big corporations to 
break down the law was to treat the passage of laws as an 
excuse for action on their part which they knew would be 
resented by the public, it being their purpose to turn this 
resentment against the law instead of against themselves. 
The heads of the Louisville and Nashville road were bitter 
opponents of everything done by the Government toward 
securing good treatment for their employees. In February, 
1908, they and various other railways announced that they 
intended to reduce the wages of their employees. A general 
strike, with all the attendant disorder and trouble, was 
threatened in consequence. I accordingly sent the following 
open letter to the Inter-State Commerce Commission : 

February 18, 1908. 

"7*0 the Inter-State Commerce Commission : 

I am informed that a number of railroad companies have 
served notice of a proposed reduction of wages of their 
employees. One of them, the Louisville and Nashville, 
in announcing the reduction, states that " the drastic laws 
inimical to the interests of the railroads that have in the past 
year or two been enacted by Congress and the State Legis- 
latures " are largely or chiefly responsible for the conditions 
requiring the reduction. 

Under such circumstances it is possible that the public 
may soon be confronted by serious industrial disputes, and 
the law provides that in such case either party may demand 
the services of your Chairman and of the Commissioner of 
Labor as a Board of Mediation and Conciliation. These 
reductions in wages may be warranted, or they may not. 
As to this the public, which is a vitally interested party, can 
form no judgment without a more complete knowledge 
of the essential facts and real merits of the case than it now 
has or. than it can possibly obtain from the special pleadings, 
certain to be put forth by each side in case their dispute 



538 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

should bring about serious interruption to traffic. If the 
reduction in wages is due to natural causes, the loss of 
business being such that the burden should be, and is, 
equitably distributed between capitalist and wage-worker, 
the public should know it. If it is caused by legislation, 
the public, and Congress, should know it; and if it is caused 
by misconduct in the past financial or other operations of any 
railroad, then everybody should know it, especially if the 
excuse of unfriendly legislation is advanced as a method of 
covering up past business misconduct by the railroad manag- 
ers, or as a justification for failure to treat fairly the wage- 
earning employees of the company. 

Moreover, an industrial conflict between a railroad 
corporation and its employees offers peculiar opportunities 
to any small number of evil-disposed persons to destroy life 
and property and foment public disorder. Of course, if 
life, property, and public order are endangered, prompt 
and drastic measures for their protection become the first 
plain duty. All other issues then become subordinate to 
the preservation of the public peace, and the real merits 
of the original controversy are necessarily lost from view. 
This vital consideration should be ever kept in mind by 
all law-abiding and far-sighted members of labor organiza- 
tions. 

It is sincerely to be hoped, therefore, that any wage con- 
troversy that may arise between the railroads and their 
employees may find a peaceful solution through the methods 
of conciliation and arbitration already provided by Congress, 
which have proven so effective during the past year. To 
this end the Commission should be in a position to have avail- 
able for any Board of Conciliation or Arbitration relevant 
data pertaining to such carriers as may become involved in 
industrial disputes. Should conciliation fail to effect a 
settlement and arbitration be rejected, accurate information 
should be available in order to develop a properly informed 
public opinion. 

I therefore ask you to make such investigation, both of 
your records and by any other means at your command, as 
will enable you to furnish data concerning such conditions 



SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL JUSTICE 539 

obtaining on tlie Louisville and Nashville and any other 
roads, as may relate, directly or indirectly, to the real merits 
of the possibly impending controversy. 

Theodore Roosevelt." 

This letter achieved its purpose, and the threatened re- 
duction of wages was not made. It was an instance of what 
could be accomplished by governmental action. Let me 
add, however, with all the emphasis I possess, that this 
does not mean any failure on my part to recognize the fact 
that if governmental action places too heavy burdens on 
railways, it will be impossible for them to operate without 
doing injustice to somebody. Railways cannot pay proper 
wages and render proper service unless they make money. 
The investors must get a reasonable profit or they will not 
invest, and the public cannot be well served unless the 
investors are making reasonable profits. There is every 
reason why rates should not be too high, but they must be 
sufficiently high to allow the railways to pay good wages. 
Moreover, when laws like workmen's compensation laws, 
and the like are passed, it must always be kept in mind by 
the Legislature that the purpose is to distribute over the whole 
community a burden that should not be borne only by those 
least able to bear it — that is, by the injured man or the 
widow and orphans of the dead man. If the railway is 
already receiving a disproportionate return from the public, 
then the burden may, with propriety, bear purely on the 
railway ; but if it is not earning a disproportionate return, 
then the public must bear its share of the burden of the 
increased service the railway is rendering. Dividends and 
wages should go up together ; and the relation of rates to 
them should never be forgotten. This of course does not 
apply to dividends based on water ; nor does it mean that if 
foolish people have built a road that renders no service, the 
public must nevertheless in some way guarantee a return 
on the investment ; but it does mean that the interests of 
the honest investor are entitled to the same protection as the 
interests of the honest manager, the honest shipper and the 
honest wage earner. All these conflicting considerations 



540 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

should be carefully considered by Legislatures before passing 
laws. One of the great objects in creating commissions 
should be the provision of disinterested, fair-minded experts 
who will really and wisely consider all these matters, and 
will shape their actions accordingly. This is one reason 
why such matters as the regulation of rates, the provision 
for full crews on roads and the like should be left for treat- 
ment by railway commissions, and not be settled off hand 
by direct legislative action. 



APPENDIX 

SOCIALISM 

As regards what I have said in this chapter concerning SociaHsm, 
I wish to call especial attention to the admirable book on "Marxism 
versus Socialism," which has just been published by Vladimir D. 
Simkhovitch. What I have, here and elsewhere, merely pointed 
out in rough and ready fashion from actual observation of the facts 
of life around me. Professor Simkhovitch in his book has discussed 
with keen practical insight, with profundity of learning, and with 
a wealth of applied philosophy. Crude thinkers in the United 
States, and moreover honest and intelligent men who are not crude 
thinkers, but who are oppressed by the sight of the misery around 
them and have not deeply studied what has been done elsewhere, 
are very apt to adopt as their own the theories of European 
Marxian Socialists of half a century ago, ignorant that the course 
of events has so completely falsified the prophecies contained in 
these theories that they have been abandoned even by the authors 
themselves. With quiet humor Professor Simkhovitch now and 
then makes an allusion which shows that he appreciates to per- 
fection this rather curious quality of some of our fellow country- 
men ; as for example when he says that "A Socialist State with the 
farmer outside of it is a conception that can rest comfortably only in 
the head of an American Socialist," or as when he speaks of Marx 
and Engels as men "to whom thinking was not an irrelevant 
foreign tradition." Too many thoroughly well-meaning men and 
women in the America of to-day glibly repeat and accept — much 
as medieval schoolmen repeated and accepted authorized dogma in 
their day — various assumptions and speculations by Marx and 
others which by the lapse of time and by actual experiment have 
been shown to possess not one shred of value. Professor Sim- 
khovitch possesses the gift of condensation as well as the gift of clear 
and logical statement, and it is not possible to give in brief any 
idea of his admirable work. Every social reformer who desires 
to face facts should study it — just as social reformers should 
study John Graham Brooks's "American Syndicalism." From 

S4I 



542 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

Professor Simkhovitch's book we Americans should learn : First, 
to discard crude thinking; second, to realize that the orthodox 
or so-called scientific or purely economic or materialistic socialism 
of the type preached by Marx is an exploded theory ; and, third, 
that many of the men who call themselves Socialists to-day are in 
reality merely radical social reformers, with whom on many points 
good citizens can and ought to work in hearty general agreement, 
and whom in many practical matters of government good citizens 
can well afford to follow. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE MONROE DOCTRINE AND THE PANAMA CANAL 

NO nation can claim rights without acknowledging 
the duties that go with the rights. It is a con- 
temptible thing for a great nation to render itself 
impotent in international action, whether because 
of cowardice or sloth, or sheer inability or unwillingness to 
look into the future. It is a very wicked thing for a nation 
to do wrong to others. But the most contemptible and most 
wicked course of conduct is for a nation to use offensive lan- 
guage or be guilty of offensive actions toward other people 
and yet fail to hold its own if the other nation retaliates ; 
and it is almost as bad to undertake responsibilities and then 
not fulfil them. During the seven and a half years that I 
was President, this Nation behaved in international matters 
toward all other nations precisely as an honorable man be- 
haves to his fellow-men. We made no promise which we 
could not and did not keep. We made no threat which we 
did not carry out. We never failed to assert our rights in 
the face of the strong, and we never failed to treat both strong 
and weak with courtesy and justice; and against the weak 
when they misbehaved we were slower to assert our rights 
than we were against the strong. 

As a legacy of the Spanish War we were left with peculiar 
relations to the Philippines, Cuba, and Porto Rico, and with 
an immensely added interest in Central America and the 
Caribbean Sea. As regards the Philippines my belief was 
that we should train them for self-government as rapidly 
as possible, and then leave them free to decide their own fate. 
I did not believe in setting the time-limit within which we 
would give them independence, because I did not believe it 
wise to try to forecast how soon they would be fit for self- 

543 



544 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

government ; and once having made the promise I would 
have felt that it was imperative to keep it. Within a few 
months of my assuming office we had stamped out the last 
armed resistance in the Philippines that was not of merely 
sporadic character; and as soon as peace was secured we 
turned our energies to developing the islands in the interests 
of the natives. We established schools everywhere ; we 
built roads; we administered an even-handed justice; we 
did everything possible to encourage agriculture and indus- 
try ; and in constantly increasing measure we employed 
natives to do their own governing, and finally provided a 
legislative chamber. No higher grade of public officials ever 
handled the affairs of any colony than the public officials 
who in succession governed the Philippines. With the 
possible exception of the Sudan, and not even excepting 
Algiers, I know of no country ruled and administered by men 
of the white race where that rule and that administration 
have been exercised so emphatically with an eye single to 
the welfare of the natives themselves. The English and 
Dutch administrators of Malaysia have done admirable 
work; but the profit to the Europeans in those States has 
always been one of the chief elements considered ; whereas 
in the Philippines our whole attention was concentrated 
upon the welfare of the Filipinos themselves, if anything to 
the neglect of our own interests. 

I do not believe that America has any special beneficial 
interest in retaining the Philippines. Our work there has 
benefited us only as any efficiently done work performed for 
the benefit of others does incidentally help the character of 
those who do it. The people of the islands have never 
developed so rapidly, from every standpoint, as during 
the years of the American occupation. The time will 
come when it will be wise to take their own judgment as to 
whether they wish to continue their association with America 
or not. There is, however, one consideration upon which 
we should insist. Either we should retain complete control 
of the islands, or absolve ourselves from all responsibility 
for them. Any half and half course would be both foolish 
and disastrous. We are governing and have been governing 



MONROE DOCTRINE AND PANAMA CANAL 545 

the Islands In the Interests of the Filipinos themselves. If 
after due time the Filipinos themselves decide that they do 
not wish to be thus governed, then I trust that we will leave ; 
but when we do leave it must be distinctly understood that 
we retain no protectorate — and above all that we take part 
in no joint protectorate — over the Islands, and give them 
no guarantee, of neutrality or otherwise ; that, in short, 
we are absolutely quit of responsibility for them, of every 
kind and description. 

The Filipinos were quite Incapable of standing by them- 
selves when we took possession of the islands, and we had 
made no promise concerning them. But we had explicitly 
promised to leave the Island of Cuba, had explicitly promised 
that Cuba should be Independent. Early In my administra- 
tion that promise was redeemed. When the promise was 
made, I doubt if there was a single ruler or diplomat in 
Europe who believed that It would be kept. As far as I 
know, the United States was the first power which, having 
made such a promise, kept it In letter and spirit. England 
was unwise enough to make such a promise when she took 
Egypt. It would have been a capital misfortune to have 
kept the promise, and England has remained in Egypt for 
over thirty years, and will unquestionably remain indefi- 
nitely ; but though it is necessary for her to do so, the fact 
of her doing so has meant the breaking of a positive promise 
and has been a real evil. Japan made the same guarantee 
about Korea, but as far as can be seen there was never even 
any thought of keeping the promise in this case ; and Korea, 
which had shown herself utterly impotent either for self- 
government or self-defense, was In actual fact almost immedi- 
ately annexed to Japan. 

We made the promise to give Cuba independence ; and we 
kept the promise. Leonard Wood was left in as Governor 
for two or three years, and evolved order out of chaos, raising 
the administration of the Island to a level, moral and mate- 
rial, which it had never before achieved. We also by treaty 
gave the Cubans substantial advantages in our markets. 
Then we left the Island, turning the government over to its 
own people. After four or five years a revolution broke out, 
2 N 



546 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

during my administration, and we again had to intervene to 
restore order. We promptly sent thither a small army of 
pacification. Under General Barry, order was restored and 
kept, and absolute justice done. The American troops were 
then withdrawn and the Cubans reestablished in complete 
possession of their own beautiful island, and they are in 
possession of it now. There are plenty of occasions in our 
history when we have shown weakness or inefficiency, and 
some occasions when we have not been as scrupulous as we 
should have been as regards the rights of others. But I know 
of no action by any other government in relation to a weaker 
power which showed such disinterested efficiency in render- 
ing service as was true in connection with our intervention 
in Cuba. 

In Cuba, as in the Philippines and as in Porto Rico, Santo 
Domingo, and later in Panama, no small part of our success 
was due to the fact that we put in the highest grade of men as 
public officials. This practice was inaugurated under Presi- 
dent McKinley. I found admirable men in office, and I 
continued them and appointed men like them as their suc- 
cessors. The way that the custom-houses in Santo Do- 
mingo were administered by Colton definitely established 
the success of our experiment in securing peace for that island 
republic ; and in Porto Rico, under the administration of 
affairs under such officials as Hunt, Winthrop, Post, Ward 
and Grahame, more substantial progress was achieved in a 
decade than in any previous century. 

The Philippines, Cuba, and Porto Rico came within our 
own sphere of governmental action. In addition to this we 
asserted certain rights in the Western Hemisphere under the 
Monroe Doctrine. My endeavor was not only to assert 
these rights, but frankly and fully to acknowledge the 
duties that went with the rights. 

The Monroe Doctrine lays down the rule that the Western 
Hemisphere is not hereafter to be treated as subject to 
settlement and occupation by Old World powers. It is not 
international law ; but it is a cardinal principle of our foreign 
policy. There is no difficulty at the present day in maintain- 
ing this doctrine, save where the American power whose 



MONROE DOCTRINE AND PANAMA CANAL 547 




interest is threatened has shown itself in international mat- 
ters both weak and delinquent. The great and prosperous 
civilized commonwealths, such as the Argentine, Brazil, 
and Chile, in the Southern half of South America, have 
advanced so far that they no 
longer stand in any position of 
tutelage toward the United States. 
They occupy toward us precisely 
the position that Canada occupies. 
Their friendship is the friendship 
of equals for equals. My view 
was that as regards these nations 
there was no more necessity for 
asserting the Monroe Doctrine 
than there was to assert it in re- 
gard to Canada. They were com- 
petent to assert it for themselves. 
Of course if one of these nations, 
or if Canada, should be overcome 
by some Old World power, which 
then proceeded to occupy its ter- 
ritory, we would undoubtedly, if 
the American Nation needed our help, give it in order to 
prevent such occupation from taking place. But the initia- 
tive would come from the Nation itself, and the United 
States would merely act as a friend whose help was invoked. 
The case was (and is) widely different as regards certain 
— not all — of the tropical states in the neighborhood of the 
Caribbean Sea. Where these states are stable and pros- 
perous, they stand on a footing of absolute equality with all 
other communities. But some of them have been a prey 
to such continuous revolutionary misrule as to have grown 
impotent either to do their duties to outsiders or to enforce 
their rights against outsiders. The United States has not 
the slightest desire to make aggressions on any one of these 
states. On the contrary, it will submit to much from them 
without showing resentment. If any great civilized power, 
Russia or Germany, for instance, had behaved toward us as 
Venezuela under Castro behaved, this country would have 



Medal awarded by Mr. Roose- 
velt FOR TWO years' CONTINUOUS 
SERVICE ON THE PANAMA CaNAL. 



548 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

gone to war at once. We did not go to war with Venezuela 
merely because our people declined to be irritated by the 
actions of a weak opponent, and showed a forbearance which 
probably went beyond the limits of wisdom in refusing to 
take umbrage at what was done by the weak; although we 
would certainly have resented it had it been done by the 
strong. In the case of two states, however, affairs reached 
such a crisis that we had to act. These two states were 
Santo Domingo and the then owner of the Isthmus of 
Panama, Colombia. 

The Santo Domingan case was the less important ; and yet 
it possessed a real importance, and moreover is instructive be- 
cause the action there taken should serve as a precedent for 
American action in all similar cases. During the early years 
of my administration Santo Domingo was in its usual condi- 
tion of chronic revolution. There was always fighting, al- 
ways plundering; and the successful graspers for govern- 
mental power were always pawning ports and custom-houses, 
or trying to put them up as guarantees for loans. Of 
course the foreigners who made loans under such conditions 
demanded exorbitant interest, and if they were Europeans ex- 
pected their governments to stand by them. So utter was 
the disorder that on one occasion when Admiral Dewey 
landed to pay a call of ceremony on the President, he and his 
party were shot at by revolutionists in crossing the square, 
and had to return to the ships, leaving the call unpaid. There 
was default on the interest due to the creditors ; and finally 
the latter Insisted upon their governments intervening. 
Two or three of the European powers were endeavoring to 
arrange for concerted action, and I was finally notified that 
these powers intended to take and hold several of the sea- 
ports which held custom-houses. 

This meant that unless I acted at once I would find 
foreign powers In partial possession of Santo Domingo; in 
which event the very individuals who, in the actual event 
deprecated the precaution taken to prevent such action, 
would have advocated extreme and violent measures to undo 
the effect of their own supineness. Nine-tenths of wisdom 
is to be wise in time, and at the right time ; and my whole 



MONROE DOCTRINE AND PANAMA CANAL 549 

foreign policy was based on the exercise of intelligent fore- 
thought and of decisive action sufficiently far in advance of 
any likely crisis to make it improbable that we would run 
into serious trouble. 

Santo Domingo had fallen into such chaos that once for 
some weeks there were two rival governments in it, and a 
revolution was being carried on against each. At one period 
one government was at sea in a small gunboat, but still 
stoutly maintained that it was in possession of the island and 
entitled to make loans and declare peace or war. The 
situation had become intolerable by the time that I inter- 
fered. There was a naval commander in the waters whom I 
directed to prevent any fighting which might menace the 
custom-houses. He carried out his orders, both to his and 
my satisfaction, in thoroughgoing fashion. On one occa- 
sion, when an insurgent force threatened to attack a town 
in which Americans had interests, he notified the com- 
manders on both sides that he would not permit any fighting 
in the town, but that he would appoint a certain place where 
they could meet and fight it out, and that the victors should 
have the town. They agreed to meet his wishes, the fight 
came off at the appointed place, and the victors, who if I 
remember rightly were the insurgents, were given the town. 

It was the custom-houses that caused the trouble, for they 
offered the only means of raising money, and the revolutions 
were carried on to get possession of them. Accordingly I 
secured an agreement with the governmental authorities, 
who for the moment seemed best able to speak for the 
country, by which these custom-houses were placed under 
American control. The arrangement was that we should 
keep order and prevent any interference with the custom- 
houses or the places where they stood, and should collect 
the revenues. Forty-five per cent of the revenue was then 
turned over to the Santo Domingan Government, and fifty- 
five per cent put in a sinking fund in New York for the 
benefit of the creditors. The arrangement worked in capital 
style. On the forty-five per cent basis the Santo Domingan 
Government received from us a larger sum than it had ever 
received before when nominally all the revenue went to it. 



550 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

The creditors were entirely satisfied with the arrangement, 
and no excuse for interference by European powers re- 
mained. Occasional disturbances occurred in the island, of 
course, but on the whole there ensued a degree of peace and 
prosperity which the island had not known before for at 
least a century. 

All this was done without the loss of a life, with the assent 
of all the parties in interest, and without subjecting the 
United States to any charge, while practically all of the 
interference, after the naval commander whom I have men- 
tioned had taken the initial steps in preserving order, con- 
sisted in putting a first-class man trained in our insular serv- 
ice at the head of the Santo Domingan customs service. 
We secured peace, we protected the people of the islands 
against foreign foes, and we minimized the chance of domes- 
tic trouble. We satisfied the creditors and the foreign na- 
tions to which the creditors belonged ; and our own part of 
the work was done with the utmost efficiency and with rigid 
honesty, so that not a particle of scandal was ever so much 
as hinted at. 

Under these circumstances those who do not know the 
nature of the professional international philanthropists would 
suppose that these apostles of international peace would 
have been overjoyed with what we had done. As a matter of 
fact, when they took any notice of it at all it was to denounce 
it; and those American newspapers which are fondest of 
proclaiming themselves the foes of war and the friends of 
peace violently attacked me for averting war from, and 
bringing peace to, the island. They insisted I had no power 
to make the agreement, and demanded the rejection of the 
treaty which was to perpetuate the agreement. They were, 
of course, wholly unable to advance a single sound reason of 
any kind for their attitude. I suppose the real explanation 
was partly their dislike of me personally, and unwillingness 
to see peace come through or national honor upheld by me ; 
and in the next place their sheer, simple devotion to prattle 
and dislike of efficiency. They liked to have people come 
together and talk about peace, or even sign bits of paper 
with something about peace or arbitration on them, but they 



MONROE DOCTRINE AND PANAMA CANAL 551 

took no interest whatever in the practical achievement of a 
peace that told for good government and decency and hon- 
esty. They were joined by the many moderately well- 
meaning men who always demand that a thing be done, 
but also always demand that it be not done in the only 
way in which it is, as a matter of fact, possible to do it. The 
men of this kind insisted that of course Santo Domingo 
must be protected and made to behave itself, and that of 
course the Panama Canal must be dug; but they insisted 
even more strongly that neither feat should be accomplished 
in the only way in which it was possible to accomplish it at all. 
The Constitution did not explicitly give me power to bring 
about the necessary agreement with Santo Domingo. But 
the Constitution did not forbid my doing what I did. I put 
the agreement into effect, and I continued its execution for 
two years before the Senate acted ; and I would have con- 
tinued it until the end of my term, if necessary, without any 
action by Congress. But it was far preferable that there 
should be action by Congress, so that we might be proceeding 
under a treaty which was the law of the land and not merely 
by a direction of the Chief Executive which would lapse 
when that particular executive left office. I therefore did 
my best to get the Senate to ratify what I had done. 
There was a good deal of difficulty about it. With the 
exception of one or two men like Clark of Arkansas, the 
Democratic Senators acted in that spirit of unworthy par- 
tisanship which subordinates national interest to some fan- 
cied partisan advantage, and they were cordially backed by all 
that portion of the press which took its inspiration from 
Wall Street, and was violently hostile to the Administration 
because of its attitude towards great corporations. Most 
of the Republican Senators under the lead of Senator Lodge 
stood by me ; but some of them, of the more "conservative" 
or reactionary type, who were already growing hostile to me 
on the trust question, first proceeded to sneer at what had 
been done, and to raise all kinds of meticulous objections, 
which they themselves finally abandoned, but which fur- 
nished an excuse on which the opponents of the treaty could 
hang adverse action. Unfortunately the Senators who were 



552 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

most apt to speak of the dignity of the Senate, and to insist 
upon its importance, were the very ones who were also 
most apt to try to make display of this dignity and impor- 
tance by thwarting the public business. This case was typi- 
cal. The Republicans in question spoke against certain 
provisions of the proposed treaty. They then, having in- 
geniously provided ammunition for the foes of the treaty, 
abandoned their opposition to It, and the Democrats stepped 
into the position they had abandoned. Enough Republi- 
cans were absent to prevent the securing of a two-thirds 
vote for the treaty, and the Senate adjourned without any 
action at all, and with a feeling of entire self-satisfaction at 
having left the country in the position of assuming a re- 
sponsibility and then failing to fulfil it. Apparently the 
Senators In question felt that in some way they had upheld 
their dignity. All that they had really done was to shirk 
their duty. Somebody had to do that duty, and accordingly 
I did it. I went ahead and administered the proposed 
treaty anyhow, considering it as a simple agreement on the 
part of the Executive which would be converted into a 
treaty whenever the Senate acted. After a couple of years 
the Senate did act, having previously made some utterly 
unimportant changes which I ratified and persuaded Santo 
Domingo to ratify. In all its history Santo Domingo has 
had nothing happen to It as fortunate as this treaty, and 
the passing of It saved the United States from having to 
face serious difficulties with one or more foreign powers. 
It cannot in the long run prove possible for the United 
States to protect delinquent American nations from punish- 
ment for the non-performance of their duties unless she 
undertakes to make them perform their duties. People 
may theorize about this as much as they wish, but whenever 
a sufficiently strong outside nation becomes sufficiently 
aggrieved, then either that nation will act or the United 
States Government Itself will have to act. We were face to 
face at one period of my administration with this condition 
of affairs In Venezuela, when Germany, rather feebly backed 
by England, undertook a blockade against Venezuela to 
make Venezuela adopt the German and English view about 



MONROE DOCTRINE AND PANAMA CANAL 553 



certain agreements. There was real danger that the block- 
ade would finally result In Germany's taking possession of 
certain cities or custom-houses. I succeeded, however, 
In getting all the parties In Interest to submit their cases to 
the Hague Tribunal. 

By far the most Important action I took In foreign affairs 
during the time I was President related to the Panama 
Canal. Here again there 



was much accusation about 
my having acted In an "un- 
constitutional" manner — a 
position which can be upheld 
only If Jefferson's action In 
acquiring Louisiana be also 
treated as unconstitutional ; 
and at different stages of 
the affair believers In a do- 
nothing policy denounced 
me as having "usurped 
authority" — which meant, 
that when nobody else could 
or would exercise efficient 
authority, I exercised it. 

During the nearly four 
hundred years that had 
elapsed since Balboa crossed 
the Isthmus, there had been 
a good deal of talk about 
building an Isthmus canal, 
and there had been various 
discussions of the subject and negotiations about it in 
Washington for the previous half century. So far It had 
all resulted merely in conversation ; and the time had come 
when unless somebody was prepared to act with decision 
we would have to resign ourselves to at least half a century 
of further conversation. Under the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty 
signed shortly after I became President, and thanks to our 
negotiations with the French Panama Company, the United 
States at last acquired a possession, so far as Europe was 




Copyright by underwood and Underwood. 
Colonel G. W. Goethals. 



554 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

concerned, which warranted her In immediately undertak- 
ing the task. It remained to decide where the canal should 
be, whether along the line already pioneered by the French 
company in Panama, or in Nicaragua. Panama belonged 
to the Republic of Colombia. Nicaragua bid eagerly for the 
privilege of having the United States build the canal through 
her territory. As long as it was doubtful which route we 
would decide upon, Colombia extended every promise of 
friendly cooperation : at the Pan-American Congress in 
Mexico her delegate joined in the unanimous vote which 
requested the United States forthwith to build the canal ; 
and at her eager request we negotiated the Hay-Herran 
Treaty with her, which gave us the right to build the canal 
across Panama. A board of experts sent to the Isthmus had 
reported that this route was better than the Nicaragua route, 
and that it would be well to build the canal over it provided 
we could purchase the rights of the French company for forty 
million dollars ; but that otherwise they would advise taking 
the Nicaragua route. Ever since 1846 we had had a treaty 
with the power then in control of the Isthmus, the Republic 
of New Granada, the predecessor of the Republic of Colombia 
and of the present Republic of Panama, by which treaty the 
United States was guaranteed free and open right of way 
across the Isthmus of Panama by any mode of communica- 
tion that might be constructed, while in return our Govern- 
ment guaranteed the perfect neutrality of the Isthmus with 
a view to the preservation of free transit. 

For nearly fifty years we had asserted the right to prevent 
the closing of this highway of commerce. Secretary of State 
Cass in 1858 officially stated the American position as follows : 

"Sovereignty has its duties as well as its rights, and none 
of these local governments, even if administered with more 
regard to the just demands of other nations than they have 
been, would be permitted, in a spirit of Eastern isolation, to 
close the gates of intercourse of the great highways of the 
world, and justify the act by the pretension that these 
avenues of trade and travel belong to them and that they 
choose to shut them, or, what is almost equivalent, to en- 
cumber them with such unjust relations as would prevent 
their general use." 



MONROE DOCTRINE AND PANAMA CANAL 555 

We had again and again been forced to intervene to pro- 
tect the transit across the Isthmus, and the intervention was 
frequently at the request of Colombia herself. The effort 
to build a canal by private capital had been made under 
De Lesseps and had resulted in lamentable failure. Every 
serious proposal to build the canal in such manner had been 
abandoned. The United States had repeatedly announced 
that we would not permit it to be built or controlled by any 
old-world government. Colombia was utterly impotent to 
build it herself. Under these circumstances it had become 
a matter of imperative obligation that we should build it 
ourselves without further delay. 

I took final action in 1903. During the preceding fifty- 
three years the Governments of New Granada and of its 
successor, Colombia, had been in a constant state of flux ; 
and the State of Panama had sometimes been treated as al- 
most independent, in a loose Federal league, and sometimes 
as the mere property of the Government at Bogota ; and 
there had been innumerable appeals to arms, sometimes 
for adequate, sometimes for inadequate, reasons. The fol- 
lowing is a partial list of the disturbances on the Isthmus of 
Panama during the period in question, as reported to us 
by our consuls. It is not possible to give a complete list, 
and some of the reports that speak of "revolutions" must 
mean unsuccessful revolutions : 

May 22, 1850. — Outbreak; two Americans killed. 
War vessel demanded to quell outbreak. 

October, 1850. — Revolutionary plot to bring about 
independence of the Isthmus. 

July 22, 1851. — Revolution in four Southern provinces. 

November 14, 1851. — Outbreak at Chagres, Man- 
of-war requested for Chagres. 

June 27, 1853. — Insurrection at Bogota, and consequent 
disturbance on Isthmus. War vessel demanded. 

May 23, 1854. — Political disturbances. War vessel 
requested. 

June 28, 1854. — Attempted revolution. 

October 24, 1854. — Independence of Isthmus demanded 
by provincial legislature. 



556 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

April, i8c;6. — Riot, and massacre of Americans. 

May 4, 1856. — Riot. 

May 18, 1856. — Riot. 

June 3, 1856. — Riot. 

October 2, 1856. — Conflict between two native parties. 
United States force landed. 

December 18, 1858. — Attempted secession of Panama. 

April, 1859. — Riots. 

September, i860. — Outbreak. 

October 4, i860. — Landing of United States forces In 
consequence. 

May 23, 1861. — Intervention of the United States forces 
required, by intendente. 

October 2, 1861. — Insurrection and civil war. 

April 4, 1862. — Measures to prevent rebels crossing 
Isthmus. 

June 13, 1862. — Mosquera's troops refused admittance 
to Panama. 

March, 1865. — Revolution, and United States troops 
landed. 

August, 1865. — Riots; unsuccessful attempt to invade 
Panama. 

March, 1866. — Unsuccessful revolution. 

April, 1867. — Attempt to overthrow Government. 

August, 1867. — Attempt at revolution. 

July 5, 1868. — Revolution; provisional government 
inaugurated. 

August 29, 1868. — Revolution; provisional government 
overthrown. 

April, 1871. — Revolution; followed apparently by 
counter revolution. 

April, 1873. — Revolution and civil war which lasted to 
October, 1875. 

August, 1876. — Civil war which lasted until April, 1877. 

July, 1878. — Rebellion. 

December, 1878. — Revolt. 

April, 1879. — Revolution. 

June, 1879. — Revolution. 

March, 1883. — Riot. 



MONROE DOCTRINE AND PANAMA CANAL 557 

May, 1883. — Riot. 

June, 1884. — Revolutionary attempt. 

December, 1884. — Revolutionary attempt. 

January, 1885. — Revolutionary disturbances. 

March, 1885. — Revolution. 

April, 1887. — Disturbance on Panama Railroad. 

November, 1887. — Disturbance on line of canal. 

January, 1889. — Riot. 

January, 1895. — Revolution which lasted until April. 

March, 1895. — Incendiary attempt. 

October, 1899. — Revolution. 

February, 1900, to July, 1900. — Revolution. 

January, 1901. — Revolution. 

July, 1901. — Revolutionary disturbances. 

September, 1901. — City of Colon taken by rebels. 

March, 1902. — Revolutionary disturbances. 

July, 1902. — Revolution. 

The above is only a partial list of the revolutions, rebel- 
lions, insurrections, riots, and other outbreaks that occurred 
during the period in question ; yet they number fifty-three 
for the fifty-three years, and they showed a tendency to 
increase, rather than decrease, in numbers and intensity. 
One of them lasted for nearly three years before it was quelled ; 
another for nearly a year. In short, the experience of over 
half a century had shown Colombia to be utterly incapable 
of keeping order on the Isthmus. Only the active interfer- 
ence of the United States had enabled her to preserve so 
much as a semblance of sovereignty. Had it not been for 
the exercise by the United States of the police power in 
her interest, her connection with the Isthmus would have 
been sundered long before it was. In 1856, in i860, in 1873, 
in 1885, in 1901, and again in 1902, sailors and marines 
from United States warships were forced to land in order to 
patrol the Isthmus, to protect life and property, and to see 
that the transit across the Isthmus was kept open. In 1861, 
in 1862, in 1885, and in 1900, the Colombian Government 
asked that the United States Government would land troops 
to protect Colombian interests and maintain order on the 



558 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



Isthmus. The people of Panama during the preceding 
twenty years had three times sought to establish their 
independence by revolution or secession — in 1885, in 1895, 
and in 1899. 

The peculiar relations of the United States toward the 
Isthmus, and the acquiescence by Colombia in acts which 
were quite incompatible with the theory of her having an 
absolute and unconditioned sovereignty on the Isthmus, 





Drawing for Punch by E. T. Reed. 

"Kindred Spirits of the Strenuous Lite." 
(Kaiser Wilhelm II and President Roosevelt.) 

are illustrated by the following three telegrams between two 
of our naval officers whose ships were at the Isthmus, and 
the Secretary of the Navy on the occasion of the first out- 
break that occurred on the Isthmus after I became President 
(a year before Panama became independent) : 

September 12, 1902. 
Ranger, Panama: 

United States guarantees perfect neutrality of Isthmus 
and that a free transit from sea to sea be not interrupted or 
embarrassed. . . . Any transportation of troops which 
might contravene these provisions of treaty should not be 
sanctioned by you, nor should use of road be permitted 
which might convert the line of transit into theater of hos- 

^'^'^y- Moody. 



MONROE DOCTRINE AND PANAMA CANAL 559 

Colon, September 20, 1902. 
Secretary Navy, Washington: 

Everything is conceded. The United States guards and 
guarantees traffic and the line of transit. To-day I per- 
mitted the exchange of Colombian troops from Panama to 
Colon, about 1000 men each way, the troops without arms 
in trains guarded by American naval force in the same 
manner as other passengers ; arms and ammunition in 
separate train, guarded also by naval force in the same man- 
ner as other freight. 

McLean. 



Panama, October 3, 1902. 

Secretary Navy, 

Washington, D.C. : 
Have sent this communication to the American Consul at 
Panama : 

"Inform Governor, while trains running under Unrtg'd^ 
States protection, I must decline transportation any com- 
batants, ammunition, arms, which might cause interruption 
to traffic or convert line of transit into theater hostilities." 

Casey. 

When the Government in nominal control of the Isthmus 
continually besought American interference to protect the 
"rights" it could not itself protect, and permitted our 
Government to transport Colombian troops unarmed, under 
protection of our own armed men, while the Colombian 
arms and ammunition came in a separate train, It is obvious 
that the Colombian "sovereignty" was of such a character 
as to warrant our insisting that inasmuch as It only existed 
because of our protection there should be in requital a sense 
of the obligations that the acceptance of this protection 
implied. 

Meanwhile Colombia was under a dictatorship. In 
1898 M. A. Sanclamente was elected President, and J. M. 
Maroquin Vice-President, of the Republic of Colombia. 



56o THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

On July 31, 1900, the Vice-President, Maroquin, executed 
a "coup d'etat" by seizing the person of the President, 
Sanclamente, and imprisoning him at a place a few miles out 
of Bogota. Maroquin thereupon declared himself possessed 
of the executive power because of "the absence of the Presi- 
dent" — a delightful touch of unconscious humor. He then 
issued a decree that public order was disturbed, and, upon 
that ground, assumed to himself legislative power under 
another provision of the constitution ; that is, having him- 
self disturbed the public order, he alleged the disturbance as 
a justification for seizing absolute power. Thenceforth 
Maroquin, without the aid of any legislative body, ruled as 
a dictator, combining the supreme executive, legislative, 
civil, and military authorities, in the so-called Republic of 
Colombia. The "absence" of Sanclamente from the capi- 
tal became permanent by his death in prison in the year 
1902. When the people of Panama declared their inde- 
pendence in November, 1903, no Congress had sat in Colom- 
bia since the year 1898, except the special Congress called by 
Maroquin to reject the canal treaty, and which did reject 
it by a unanimous vote, and adjourned without legislating 
on any other subject. The constitution of 1886 had taken 
away from Panama the power of self-government and vested 
it in Colombia. The coup d'etat of Maroquin took away 
from Colombia herself the power of government and vested 
it in an irresponsible dictator. 

Consideration of the above facts ought to be enough to 
show any human being that we were not dealing with normal 
conditions on the Isthmus and in Colombia. We were 
dealing with the government of an irresponsible alien dicta- 
tor, and with a condition of affairs on the Isthmus itself 
which was marked by one uninterrupted series of outbreaks 
and revolutions. As for the "consent of the governed" 
theory, that absolutely justified our action; the people on 
the Isthmus were the "governed"; they were governed by 
Colombia, without their consent, and they unanimously 
repudiated the Colombian government, and demanded 
that the United States build the canal. 

I had done everything possible, personally and through 



MONROE DOCTRINE AND PANAMA CANAL 561 

Secretary Hay, to persuade the Colombian Government 
to keep faith. Under the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, it was 
explicitly provided that the United States should build the 
canal, should control, police and protect it, and keep it open 
to the vessels of all nations on equal terms. We had as- 
sumed the position of guarantor of the canal, including, of 
course, the building of the canal, and of its peaceful use by 
all the world. The enterprise was recognized everywhere as 
responding to an international need. It was a mere travesty 
on justice to treat the government in possession of the 
Isthmus as having the right — which Secretary Cass forty- 
five years before had so emphatically repudiated — to 
close the gates of intercourse on one of the great highways of 
the world. When we submitted to Colombia the Hay- 
Herran Treaty, it had been settled that the time for delay, 
the time for permitting any government of anti-social char- 
acter, or of imperfect development, to bar the work, had 
passed. The United States had assumed in connection 
with the canal certain responsibilities not only to its own 
people but to the civilized world which imperatively de- 
manded that there should be no further delay in beginning 
the work. The Hay-Herran Treaty, if it erred at all, erred 
in being overgenerous toward Colombia. The people of 
Panama were delighted with the treaty, and the President 
of Colombia, who embodied in his own person the entire gov- 
ernment of Colombia, had authorized the treaty to be made. 
But after the treaty had been made the Colombia Govern- 
ment thought it had the matter in its own hands ; and the 
further thought, equally wicked and foolish, came into the 
heads of the people in control at Bogota that they would 
seize the French Company at the end of another year and 
take for themselves the forty million dollars which the United 
States had agreed to pay the Panama Canal Company. 

President Maroquin, through his Minister, had agreed to 
the Hay-Herran Treaty in January, 1903. He had the 
absolute power of an unconstitutional dictator to keep his 
promise or break it. He determined to break it. To 
furnish himself an excuse for breaking it he devised the plan 
of summoning a Congress especially called to reject the canal 
20 



562 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

treaty. This the Congress — a Congress of mere puppets 
— did, without a dissenting vote ; and the puppets ad- 
journed forthwith without legislating on any other subject. 
The fact that this was a mere sham, and that the President 
had entire power to confirm his own treaty and act on it if he 
desired, was shown as soon as the revolution took place, for 




The standard original drawing for Punch by E. T. Reed, Nov., 1904 

Confiscated by the Berlin Police. What are they afraid of? Is it this? 

The Berlin Police have confiscated from the numbers of Punch of Nov. 16, the page con- 
taining thi caricature of the Emperor William and President Roosevelt entitled 
"Kindred Spirits of the Strenuous Life." 



on November 6 General Reyes of Colombia addressed the 
American Minister at Bogota, on behalf of President Maro- 
quin, saying that "if the Government of the United States 
would land troops and restore the Colombian sovereignty" 
the Colombian President would "declare martial law; 



MONROE DOCTRINE AND PANAMA CANAL 563 

and, by virtue of vested constitutional authority, when 
public order is disturbed, would approve by decree the 
ratification of the canal treaty as signed ; or, if the Govern- 
ment of the United States prefers, would call an extra session 
of the Congress — with new and friendly members — next 
May to approve the treaty." This, of course, is proof posi- 
tive that the Colombian dictator had used his Congress as a 
mere shield, and a sham shield at that, and it shows how 
utterly useless it would have been further to trust his good 
faith in the matter. 

When, in August, 1903, I became convinced that Colombia 
intended to repudiate the treaty made the preceding January, 
under cover of securing its rejection by the Colombian 
Legislature, I began carefully to consider what should be 
done. By my direction Secretary Hay, personally and 
through the Minister at Bogota, repeatedly warned Colombia 
that grave consequences might follow her rejection of the 
treaty. The possibility of ratification did not wholly pass 
away until the close of the session of the Colombian Con- 
gress on the last day of October. There would then be two 
possibilities. One was that Panama would remain quiet. 
In that case I was prepared to recommend to Congress that 
we should at once occupy the Isthmus anyhow, and proceed 
to dig the canal : and I had drawn out a draft of my message 
to this effect.^ But from the information I received, I 
deemed it likely that there would be a revolution in Panama 
as soon as the Colombian Congress adjourned without 
ratifying the treaty, for the entire population of Panama felt 
that the immediate building of the canal was of vital 
concern to their well-being. Correspondents of the different 
newspapers on thelsthmus had sent to their respective papers 
widely published forecasts indicating that there would be a 
revolution in such event. 

Moreover, on October 16, at the request of Lieutenant- 
General Young, Captain Humphrey and Lieutenant Murphy, 
two army officers who had returned from the Isthmus, saw 
me and told me that there would unquestionably be a revolu- 

* See appendix at end of this chapter. 



564 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

tion on the Isthmus, that the people were unanimous in 
their criticism of the Bogota Government and their disgust 
over the failure of that Government to ratify the treaty ; 
and that the revolution would probably take place immedi- 
ately after the adjournment of the Colombian Congress. 
They did not believe that it would be before October 20, 
but they were confident that it would certainly come at the 
end of October or immediately afterwards, when the Colom- 
bian Congress had adjourned. Accordingly I directed the 
Navy Department to station various ships within easy 
reach of the Isthmus, to be ready to act in the event of need 
arising. 

These ships were barely in time. On November 3 the 
revolution occurred. Practically everybody on the Isth- 
mus, including all the Colombian troops that were already 
stationed there, joined in the revolution, and there was 
no bloodshed. But on that same day four hundred new 
Colombian troops were landed at Colon. Fortunately, the 
gunboat Nashville, under Commander Hubbard, reached 
Colon almost immediately afterwards, and when the com- 
mander of the Colombian forces threatened the lives and 
property of the American citizens, including women and 
children, in Colon, Commander Hubbard landed a few 
score sailors and marines to protect them. By a mixture 
of firmness and tact he not only prevented any assault on 
our citizens, but persuaded the Colombian commander to 
reembark his troops for Cartagena. On the Pacific side a 
Colombian gunboat shelled the City of Panama, with the 
result of killing one Chinaman — the only life lost in the 
whole affair. 

No one connected with the American Government had 
any part in preparing, inciting, or encouraging the revolu- 
tion, and except for the reports of our military and naval 
officers, which I forwarded to Congress, no one connected 
with the Government had any previous knowledge concern- 
ing the proposed revolution, except such as was accessible 
to any person who read the newspapers and kept abreast of 
current questions and current affairs. By the unanimous 
action of its people, and without the firing of a shot, the state 



MONROE DOCTRINE AND PANAMA CANAL 565 

of Panama declared themselves an Independent republic. 
The time for hesitation on our part had passed. 

My belief then was, and the events that have occurred 
since have more than justified it, that from the standpoint 
of the United States It was imperative, not only for civil but 
for military reasons, that there should be the immediate 
establishment of easy and speedy communication by sea 
between the Atlantic and the Pacific. These reasons were 
not of convenience only, but of vital necessity, and did not 
admit of indefinite delay. The action of Colombia had 
shown not only that the delay would be Indefinite, but that/ 
she intended to confiscate the property and rights of the 
French Panama Canal Company. The report of the 
Panama Canal Committee of the Colombian Senate on 
October 14, 1903, on the proposed treaty with the United 
States, proposed that all consideration of the matter should 
be postponed until October 31, 1904, when the next Colom- 
bian Congress would have convened, because by that time 
the new Congress would be in condition to determine whether 
through lapse of time the French company had not forfeited 
its property and rights. "When that time arrives," the 
report significantly declared, "the Republic, without any 
impediment, will be able to contract and will be in more 
clear, more definite and more advantageous possession, both 
legally and materially." The naked meaning of this was 
that Colombia proposed to wait a year, and then enforce a 
forfeiture of the rights and property of the French Panama 
Company, so as to secure the forty million dollars our Govern- 
ment had authorized as payment to this company. If we 
had sat supine, this would doubtless have meant that France 
would have interfered to protect the company, and we should 
then have had on the Isthmus, not the company, but France ; 
and the gravest international complications might have 
ensued. Every consideration of international morality and 
expediency, of duty to the Panama people, and of satisfac- 
tion of our own national interests and honor, bade us take 
immediate action. I recognized Panama forthwith on 
behalf of the United States, and practically all the countries 
of the world immediately followed suit. The State Depart- 



566 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

ment immediately negotiated a canal treaty with the new 
Republic. One of the foremost men in securing the Inde- 
pendence of Panama, and the treaty which authorized the 
United States forthwith to build the canal, was M. Philippe 
Bunau-Varilla, an eminent French engineer formerly associated 
with De Lesseps and then livlngon the Isthmus ; his services to 
civilization were notable, and deserve the fullest recognition. 
From the beginning to the end our course was straight- 
forward and in absolute accord with the highest of standards 
of International morality. Criticism of It can come only 
from misinformation, or else from a sentimentality which 
represents both mental weakness and a moral twist. To 
have acted otherwise than I did would have been on my 
part betrayal of the interests of the United States, indiffer- 
ence to the Interests of Panama, and recreancy to the In- 
terests of the world at large. Colombia had forfeited every 
claim to consideration ; indeed, this is not stating the case 
strongly enough : she had so acted that yielding to her 
would have meant on our part that culpable form of weak- 
ness which stands on a level with wickedness. As for me per- 
sonally, If I had hesitated to act, and had not in advance 
discounted the clamor of those Americans who have made a 
fetish of disloyalty to their country, I should have esteemed 
myself as deserving a place in Dante's inferno beside the 
faint-hearted cleric who was guilty of "II gran rifiuto." 
The facts I have given above are mere bald statements from 
the record. They show that from the beginning there had 
been acceptance of our right to insist on free transit, in 
whatever form was best, across the Isthmus ; and that to- 
wards the end there had been a no less universal feeling that 
it was our duty to the world to provide this transit In the 
shape of a canal — the resolution of the Pan-American Con- 
gress was practically a mandate to this effect. Colombia 
.was then under a one-man government, a dictatorship, 
founded on usurpation of absolute and irresponsible power. 
She eagerly pressed us to enter into an agreement with her, 
as long as there was any chance of our going to the alterna- 
tive route through Nicaragua. When she thought we 
were committed, she refused to fulfil the agreement, with the 



MONROE DOCTRINE AND PANAMA CANAL 567 

avowed hope of seizing the French company's property for 
nothing and thereby holding us up. This was a bit of pure 
bandit morahty. It would have achieved its purpose had I 
possessed as weak moral fiber as those of my critics who 
announced that I ought to have confined my action to feeble 
scolding and temporizing until the opportunity for action 
passed. I did not lift my finger to incite the revolutionists. 
The right simile to use is totally different. I simply ceased 
to stamp out the different revolutionary fuses that were al- 
ready burning. When Colombia committed flagrant wrong 
against us, I considered it no part of my duty to aid and abet 
her in her wrongdoing at our expense, and also at the 
expense of Panama, of the French company, and of the 
world generally. There had been fifty years of continuous 
bloodshed and civil strife in Panama ; because of my action 
Panama has now known ten years of such peace and pros- 
perity as she never before saw during the four centuries of 
her existence — for in Panama, as in Cuba and Santo Do- 
mingo, it was the action of the American people, against 
the outcries of the professed apostles of peace, which alone 
brought peace. We gave to the people of Panama self- 
government, and freed them from subjection to alien op- 
pressors. We did our best to get Colombia to let us treat 
her with a more than generous justice; we exercised pa- 
tience to beyond the verge of proper forbearance. When we 
did act and recognize Panama, Colombia at once acknowl- 
edged her own guilt by promptly offering to do what we had 
demanded, and what she had protested it was not in her 
power to do. But the offer came too late. What we would 
gladly have done before, it had by that time become 
impossible for us honorably to do ; for it would have 
necessitated our abandoning the people of Panama, our 
friends, and turning them over to their and our foes, who 
would have wreaked vengeance on them precisely because 
they had shown friendship to us. Colombia was solely 
responsible for her own humiliation ; and she had not then, 
and has not now, one shadow of claim, upon us, moral or 
legal ; all the wrong that was done was done by her. If, as 
representing the American people, I had not acted precisely 



MONROE DOCTRINE AND PANAMA CANAL 569 

as I did, I would have been an unfaithful or incompetent 
representative ; and inaction at that crisis would have meant 
not only indefinite delay in building the canal, but also 
practical admission on our part that we were not fit to play 
the part on the Isthmus which we had arrogated to ourselves. 
I acted on my own responsibility in the Panama matter. 
John Hay spoke of this action as follows : "The action of the 
President In the Panama matter is not only in the strictest 
accordance with the principles of justice and equity, and in 
line with all the best precedents of our public policy, but It 
was the only course he could have taken in compliance with 
our treaty rights and obligations." 

I deeply regretted, and now deeply regret, the fact that 
the Colombian Government rendered It imperative for me 
to take the action I took; but I had no alternative, con- 
sistent with the full performance of my duty to my own 
people, and to the nations of mankind. (For, be it re- 
membered, that certain other nations, Chile for example, will 
probably benefit even more by our action than will the 
United States Itself.) I am well aware that the Colombian 
people have many fine traits; that there Is among them a 
circle of high-bred men and women which would reflect 
honor on the social life of any country; and that there has 
been an Intellectual and literary development within this 
small circle which partially atones for the stagnation and 
Illiteracy of the. mass of the people; and I also know that 
even the Illiterate mass possesses many sterling qualities. 
But unfortunately In international matters every nation 
must be judged by the action of its Government. The good 
people in Colombia apparently made no effort, certainly no 
successful effort, to cause the Government to act with reason- 
able good faith towards the United States ; and Colombia had 
to take the consequences. If Brazil, or the Argentine, or 
Chile, had been In possession of the Isthmus, doubtless the 
canal would have been built under the governmental control 
of the nation thus controlling the Isthmus, with the hearty 
acquiescence of the United States and of all other powers. 
But In the actual fact the canal would not have been built 
at all save for the action I took. If men choose to say that 



570 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

It would have been better not to build it, than to build it as 
the result of such action, their position, although foolish, is 
compatible with belief in their wrongheaded sincerity. But 
it is hypocrisy, alike odious and contemptible, for any man 
to say both that we ought to have built the canal and that 
we ought not to have acted in the way we did act. 

After a sufficient period of wrangling, the Senate ratified 
the treaty with Panama, and work on the canal was begun. 
The first thing that was necessary was to decide the type of 
canal. * I summoned a board of engineering experts, foreign 
and native. They divided on their report. The majority 
of the members, including all the foreign members, approved 
a sea-level canal. The minority, including most of the 
American members, approved a lock canal. Studying these 
conclusions, I came to the belief that the minority was right. 
The two great traffic canals of the world were the Suez and 
the Soo. The Suez Canal is a sea-level canal, and it was the 
one best known to European engineers. The Soo Canal, 
through which an even greater volume of traffic passes every 
year, is a lock canal, and the American engineers were 
thoroughly familiar with it; whereas. In my judgment, the 
European engineers had failed to pay proper heed to the 
lessons taught by its operation and management. More- 
over, the engineers who were to do the work at Panama all 
favored a lock canal. I came to the conclusion that a sea- 
level canal would be slightly less exposed to damage in the 
event of war; that the running expenses, apart from the 
heavy cost of interest on the amount necessary to build It, 
would be less ; and that for small ships the time of transit 
would be less. But I also came to the conclusion that the 
lock canal at the proposed level would cost only about half 
as much to build and would be built In half the time, with 
much less risk; that for large ships the transit would be 
quicker, and that, taking into account the interest saved, 
the cost of maintenance would be less. Accordingly I recom- 
mended to Congress, on February 19, 1906, that a lock canal 
should be built, and my recommendation was adopted. 
Congress Insisted upon having It built by a commission of 
several men. I tried faithfully to get good work out of the 



MONROE DOCTRINE AND PANAMA CANAL 571 

commission, and found it quite impossible ; for a many- 
headed commission is an extremely poor executive instru- 
ment. At last I put Colonel Goethals in as head of the com- 
mission. Then, when Congress still refused to make the 
commission single-headed, I solved the difficulty by an 
executive order of January 6, 1908, which practically accom- 
plished the object by enlarging the powers of the chairman, 
making all the other members of the commission dependent 
upon him, and thereby placing the work under one-man 
control. Dr. Gorgas had already performed an inestimable 
service by caring for the sanitary conditions so thoroughly as 
to make the Isthmus as safe as a health resort. Colonel 
Goethals proved to be the man of all others to do the job. 
It would be impossible to overstate what he has done. It 
is the greatest task of any kind that any man in the world 
has accomplished during the years that Colonel Goethals 
has been at work. It is the greatest task of its own kind 
that has ever been performed in the world at all. Colonel 
Goethals has succeeded in instilling into the men under him 
a spirit which elsewhere has been found only in a few vic- 
torious armies. It is proper and appropriate that, like the 
soldiers of such armies, they should receive medals which 
are allotted each man who has served for a sufficient length 
of time. A finer body of men has never been gathered by 
any nation than the men who have done the work of building 
the Panama Canal ; the conditions under which they have 
lived and have done their work have been better than in any 
similar work ever undertaken in the tropics ; they have all 
felt an eager pride in their work; and they have made not 
only America but the whole world their debtors by what 
they have accomplished. 



APPENDIX 
COLOMBIA : THE PROPOSED MESSAGE TO CONGRESS 

The rough draft of the message I had proposed to send Congress 
ran as follows : 

"The Colombian Government, through its representative here, 
and directly in communication with our representative at Colombia, 
has refused to come to any agreement with us, and has delayed 
action so as to make it evident that it intends to make extortionate 
and improper terms with us. The Isthmian Canal bill was, of 
course, passed upon the assumption that whatever route was used, 
the benefit to the particular section of the Isthmus through which 
it passed would be so great that the country controlling this part 
would be eager to facilitate the building of the canal. It is out of 
the question to submit to extortion on the part of a beneficiary of 
the scheme. All the labor, all the expense, all the risk are to be 
assumed by us and all the skill shown by us. Those controlling 
the ground through which the canal is to be put are wholly inca- 
pable of building it. 

"Yet the interest of international commerce generally and the 
interest of this country generally demands that the canal should 
be begun with no needless delay. The refusal of Colombia properly 
to respond to our sincere and earnest efforts to come to an agree- 
ment, or to pay heed to the many concessions we have made, ren- 
ders it in my judgment necessary that the United States should 
take immediate action on one of two lines : either we should drop 
the Panama canal project and immediately begin work on the Nica- 
raguan canal, or else we should purchase all the rights of the French 
company, and, without any further parley with Colombia, enter 
upon the completion of the canal which the French company has 
begun. I feel that the latter course is the one demanded by the 
interests of this Nation, and I therefore bring the matter to your 
attention for such action in the premises as you may deem wise. 
If in your judgment it is better not to take such action, then I shall 
proceed at once with the Nicaraguan canal. 

"The reason that I advocate the action above outlined in re- 

S7^ 



APPENDIX 573 

gard to the Panama canal is, in the first place, the strong testi- 
mony of the experts that this route is the most feasible ; and in the 
next place, the impropriety from an international standpoint of 
permitting such conduct as that to which Colombia seems to incline. 
The testimony of the experts is very strong, not only that the Pan- 
ama route is feasible, but that in the Nicaragua route we may en- 
counter some unpleasant surprises, and that it is far more difficult 
to forecast the result with any certainty as regards this latter 
route. As for Colombia's attitude, it is incomprehensible upon any 
theory of desire to see the canal built upon the basis of mutual 
advantage alike to those building it and to Colombia herself. All 
we desire to do is to take up the work begun by the French Govern- 
ment and to finish it. Obviously it is Colombia's duty to help 
towards such completion. We are most anxious to come to an 
agreement with her in which most scrupulous care should be taken 
to guard her interests and ours. But we cannot consent to permit 
her to block the performance of the work which it is so greatly to 
our interest immediately to begin and carry through." 

Shortly after this rough draft was dictated the Panama revolu- 
tion came, and I never thought of the rough draft again until I was 
accused of having instigated the revolution. This accusation is 
preposterous in the eyes of any one who knows the actual condi- 
tions at Panama. Only the menace of action by us in the interest 
of Colombia kept down revolution ; as soon as Colombia's own 
conduct removed such menace, all check on the various revolu- 
tionary movements (there were at least three from entirely separate 
sources) ceased ; and then an explosion was inevitable, for the 
French company knew that all their property would be confiscated 
if Colombia put through her plans, and the entire people of Panama 
felt that if in disgust with Colombia's extortions the United 
States turned to Nicaragua, they, the people of Panama, would be 
ruined. Knowing the character of those then in charge of the 
Colombian Government, I was not surprised at their bad faith; 
but I was surprised at their folly. They apparently had no idea 
either of the power of France or the power of the United States, 
and expected to be permitted to commit wrong with impunity, 
just as Castro in Venezuela had done. The difference was that, 
unless we acted in self-defense, Colombia had it in her power to do 
us serious harm, and Venezuela did not have such power. Colom- 
bia's wrongdoing, therefore, recoiled on her own head. There 
was no new lesson taught ; it ought already to have been known to 
every one that wickedness, weakness, and folly combined rarely 
fail to meet punishment, and that the intent to do wrong, when 



574 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

joined to inability to carry the evil purpose to a successful conclu- 
sion, inevitably reacts on the wrongdoer. 

For the full history of the acquisition and building of the canal 
see "The Panama Gateway," by Joseph Bucklin Bishop (Scrib- 
ner's Sons). Mr. Bishop has been for eight years secretary of the 
commission and is one of the most efficient of the many efficient 
men to whose work on the Isthmus America owes so much. 




Nobel Prize Diploma in Case. 

CHAPTER XV 



THE PEACE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 

THERE can be no nobler cause for which to work 
than the peace of righteousness ; and high honor 
is due those serene and lofty souls who with wisdom 
and courage, with high idealism tempered by sane 
facing of the actual facts of life, have striven to bring nearer 
the day when armed strife between nation and nation, 
between class and class, between man and man shall end 
throughout the world. Because all this is true, it is also 
true that there are no men more ignoble or more foolish, 
no men whose actions are fraught with greater possibility 
of mischief to their country and to mankind, than those who 
exalt unrighteous peace as better than righteous war. The 
men who have stood highest in our history, as in the history 
of all countries, are those who scorned injustice, who were 
incapable of oppressing the weak, or of permitting their 
country, with their consent, to oppress the weak, but who did 
not hesitate to draw the sword when to leave it undrawn 
meant inability to arrest triumphant wrong. 

All this is so obvious that it ought not to be necessary to 
repeat it. Yet every man in active affairs, who also reads 
about the past, grows by bitter experience to realize that 
there are plenty of men, not only among those who mean 
ill, but among those who mean well, who are ready enough 
to praise what was done in the past, and yet are incapable 
of profiting by it when faced by the needs of the present, 

575 



576 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

During our generation this seems to have been peculiarly 
the case among the men who have become obsessed with the 
idea of obtaining universal peace by some cheap patent 
panacea. 

There has been a real and substantial growth in the feel- 
ing for international responsibility and justice among the 
great civilized nations during the past threescore or four- 
score years. There has been a real growth of recognition 
of the fact that moral turpitude is involved in the wronging 
of one nation by another, and that in most cases war is an 
evil method of settling international difficulties. But as 
yet there has been only a rudimentary beginning of the 
development of international tribunals of justice, and there 
has been no development at all of any international police 
power. Now, as I have already said, the whole fabric 
of municipal law, of law within each nation, rests ultimately 
upon the judge and the policeman ; and the complete absence 
of the policeman, and the almost complete absence of the 
judge, in international affairs, prevents there being as yet 
any real homology between municipal and international law. 

Moreover, the questions which sometimes involve nations 
in war are far more difficult and complex than any questions 
that affect merely individuals. Almost every great nation 
has inherited certain questions, either with other nations or 
with sections of its own people, which it is quite impossible, 
in the present state of civilization, to decide as matters 
between private individuals can be decided. During the 
last century at least half of the wars that have been fought 
have been civil and not foreign wars. There are big and 
powerful nations which habitually commit, either upon 
other nations or upon sections of their own people, wrongs 
so outrageous as to justify even the most peaceful persons 
in going to war. There are also weak nations so utterly 
incompetent either to protect the rights of foreigners against 
their own citizens, or to protect their own citizens against 
foreigners, that it becomes a matter of sheer duty for some 
outside power to interfere in connection with them. As 
yet In neither case is there any efficient method of getting 
international action ; and if joint action by several powers Is 



THE PEACE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 577 

secured, the result is usually considerably worse than if 
only one Power interfered. The worst infamies of modern 
times — such affairs as the massacres of the Armenians 
by the Turks, for instance — have been perpetrated in a 
time of nominally profound international peace, when there 
has been a concert of big Powers to prevent the breaking of 
this peace, although only by breaking it could the outrages 
be stopped. Be it remembered that the peoples who suf- 
fered by these hideous massacres, who saw their women 
violated and their children tortured, were actually enjoying 
all the benefits of "disarmament." Otherwise they would 
not have been massacred ; for if the Jews in Russia and the 
Armenians in Turkey had been armed, and had been effi- 
cient in the use of their arms, no mob would have meddled 
with them. 

Yet amiable but fatuous persons, with all these facts 
before their eyes, pass resolutions demanding universal 
arbitration for everything, and the disarmament of the free 
civilized powers and their abandonment of their armed 
forces ; or else they write well-meaning, solemn little books, 
or pamphlets or editorials, and articles in magazines or 
newspapers, to show that it is "an illusion" to believe that 
war ever pays, because it is expensive. This is precisely 
like arguing that we should disband the police and devote 
our sole attention to persuading criminals that it is "an 
illusion" to suppose that burglary, highway robbery and 
white slavery are profitable. It is almost useless to attempt 
to argue with these well-intentioned persons, because they 
are suffering under an obsession and are not open to reason. 
They go wrong at the outset, for they lay all the emphasis 
on peace and none at all on righteousness. They are not 
all of them physically timid men ; but they are usually men 
of soft life ; and they rarely possess a high sense of honor or 
a keen patriotism. They rarely try to prevent their fellow 
countrymen from insulting or wronging the people of other 
nations ; but they always ardently advocate that we, in our 
turn, shall tamely submit to wrong and insult from other 
nations. As Americans their folly is peculiarly scandalous, 
because if the principles they now uphold are right, it means 



578 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

that it would have been better that Americans should never 
have achieved their independence, and better that, in 1861, 
they should have peacefully submitted to seeing their country 
split into half a dozen jangling confederacies and slavery 
made perpetual. If unwilling to learn from their own 
history, let those who think that it is an "illusion" to believe 
that a war ever benefits a nation look at the difference 
between China and Japan. China has neither a fleet nor 
an efficient army. It is a huge civilized empire, one of the 
most populous on the globe ; and it has been the helpless 
prey of outsiders because it does not possess the power to 
fight. Japan stands on a footing of equality with European 
and American nations because it does possess this power. 
China now sees Japan, Russia, Germany, England and 
France in possession of fragments of her empire, and has 
twice within the lifetime of the present generation seen her 
capital in the hands of allied invaders, because she in very 
fact realizes the ideals of the persons who wish the United 
States to disarm, and then trust that our helplessness will 
secure us a contemptuous immunity from attack by outside 
nations. 

The chief trouble comes from the entire inability of these 
worthy people to understand that they are demanding 
things that are mutually incompatible when they demand 
peace at any price, and also justice and righteousness. I 
remember one representative of their number, who used to 
write little sonnets on behalf of the Mahdi and the Sudan- 
ese, these sonnets setting forth the need that the Sudan 
should be both independent and peaceful. As a matter of 
fact, the Sudan valued independence only because it desired 
to war against all Christians and to carry on an unlimited 
slave trade. It was "independent" under the Mahdi for 
a dozen years, and during those dozen years the bigotry, 
tyranny, and cruel religious intolerance were such as flour- 
ished in the seventh century, and in spite of systematic 
slave raids the population decreased by nearly two-thirds, 
and practically all the children died. Peace came, well- 
being came, freedom from rape and murder and torture and 
highway robbery, and every brutal gratification of lust and 



THE PEACE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 579 

greed came, only when the Sudan lost its independence and 
passed under English rule. Yet this well-meaning little 
sonneteer sincerely felt that his verses were issued in the 
cause of humanity. Looking back from the vantage point 
of a score of years, probably every one will agree that he 
was an absurd person. But he was not one whit more 
absurd than most of the more prominent persons who advo- 
cate disarmament by the United States, the cessation of 
up-building the navy, and the promise to agree to arbitrate 
all matters, including those affecting our national interests 
and honor, with all foreign nations. 

These persons would do no harm if they affected only 
themselves. Many of them are, in the ordinary relations 
of life, good citizens. They are exactly like the other good 
citizens who believe that enforced universal vegetarianism 
or anti-vaccination is the panacea for all ills. But in their 
particular case they are able to do harm because they 
affect our relations with foreign powers, so that other men 
pay the debt which they themselves have really incurred. 
It is the foolish, peace-at-any-price persons who try to 
persuade our people to make unwise and improper treaties, 
or to stop building up the navy. But if trouble comes and 
the treaties are repudiated, or there is a demand for armed 
intervention, it is not these people who will pay anything; 
they will stay at home in safety, and leave brave men to 
pay in blood, and honest men to pay in shame, for their 
folly. 

The trouble is that our policy is apt to go in zigzags, 
because different sections of our people exercise at different 
times unequal pressure on our government. One class of 
our citizens clamor for treaties impossible of fulfilment, 
and improper to fulfil ; another class have no objection to 
the passage of these treaties so long as there is no concrete 
case to which they apply, but instantly oppose a veto on 
their application when any concrete case does actually arise. 
One of our cardinal doctrines is freedom of speech, which 
means freedom of speech about foreigners as well as about 
ourselves ; and, inasmuch as we exercise this right with com- 
plete absence of restraint, we cannot expect other nations 



58o THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

to hold us harmless unless In the last resort we are able to 
make our own words good by our deeds. One class of our 
citizens Indulges In gushing promises to do everything for 
foreigners, another class offensively and Improperly reviles 
them ; and It Is hard to say which class more thoroughly 
misrepresents the sober, self-respecting judgment of the 
American people as a whole. The only safe rule Is to prom- 
ise little, and faithfully to keep every promise; to "speak 
softly and carry a big stick." 

A prime need for our nation, as of course for every other 
nation. Is to make up its mind definitely what It wishes, 
and not to try to pursue paths of conduct Incompatible one 
with the other. If this nation is content to be the China of 
the New World, then and then only can it afford to do away 
with the navy and the army. If it Is content to abandon 
Hawaii and the Panama Canal, to cease to talk of the 
Monroe Doctrine, and to admit the right of any European 
or Asiatic power to dictate what Immigrants shall be sent 
to and received in America, and whether or not they shall 
be allowed to become citizens and hold land — why, of 
course, if America Is content to have nothing to say on 
any of these matters and to keep silent in the presence of 
armed outsiders, then It can abandon its navy and agree to 
arbitrate all questions of all kinds with every foreign power. 
In such event it can afford to pass Its spare time in one 
continuous round of universal peace celebrations, and of 
smug self-satisfaction in having earned the derision of all 
the virile peoples of mankind. Those who advocate such 
a policy do not occupy a lofty position. But at least their 
position is understandable. 

It is entirely Inexcusable, however, to try to combine the 
unready hand with the unbridled tongue. It Is folly to 
permit freedom of speech about foreigners as well as our- 
selves — and the peace-at-any-price persons are much too 
feeble a folk to try to interfere with freedom of speech — 
and yet to try to shirk the consequences of freedom of speech. 
It is folly to try to abolish our navy, and at the same time to 
insist that we have a right to enforce the Monroe Doctrine, 
that we have a right to control the Panama Canal which we 



THE PEACE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 581 

ourselves dug, that we have a right to retain Hawaii and 
prevent foreign nations from talving Cuba, and a right to 
determine what immigrants, Asiatic or European, shall 
come to our shores, and the terms on which they shall be 
naturalized and shall hold land and exercise other privileges. 
We are a rich people, and an unmilitary people. In inter- 
national affairs we are a short-sighted people. But I know 
my countrymen. Down at bottom their temper is such 
that they will not permanently tolerate injustice done to 
them. In the long run they will no more permit affronts 
to their National honor than injuries to their national 
interest. Such being the case, they will do well to remember 
that the surest of all ways to invite disaster is to be opulent, 
aggressive and unarmed. 

Throughout the seven and a half years that I was Presi- 
dent, I pursued without faltering one consistent foreign 
policy, a policy of genuine international good will and of 
consideration for the rights of others, and at the same time 
of steady preparedness. The weakest nations knew that 
they, no less than the strongest, were safe from insult and 
injury at our hands ; and the strong and the weak alike also 
knew that we possessed both the will and the ability to guard 
ourselves from wrong or insult at the hands of any one. 

It was under my administration that the Hague Court 
was saved from becoming an empty farce. It had been 
established by joint international agreement, but no Power 
had been willing to resort to it. Those establishing it had 
grown to realize that it was in danger of becoming a mere 
paper court, so that it would never really come into being at 
all. M. d'Estournelles de Constant had been especially 
alive to this danger. By correspondence and in personal 
interviews he impressed upon me the need not only of making 
advances by actually applying arbitration — not merely 
promising by treaty to apply it — to questions that were 
up for settlement, but of using the Hague tribunal for this 
purpose. I cordially sympathized with these views. On 
the recommendation of John Hay, I succeeded in getting 
an agreement with Mexico to lay a matter in dispute be- 
tween the two republics before the Hague Court. This 



582 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

was the first case ever brought before the Hague Court. It 
was followed by numerous others ; and it definitely estab- 
lished that court as the great international peace tribunal. 
By mutual agreement with Great Britain, through the deci- 
sion of a joint commission, of which the American members 
were Senators Lodge and Turner, and Secretary Root, we 
were able peacefully to settle the Alaska Boundary question, 
the only question remaining between ourselves and the 
British Empire which it was not possible to settle by friendly 
arbitration ; this therefore represented the removal of the 
last obstacle to absolute agreement between the two peo- 
ples. We were of substantial service in bringing to a satis- 
factory conclusion the negotiations at Algeciras concerning 
Morocco. We concluded with Great Britain, and with 
most of the other great nations, arbitration treaties spe- 
cifically agreeing to arbitrate all matters, and especially the 
interpretation of treaties, save only as regards questions 
affecting territorial integrity, national honor and vital 
national interest. We made with Great Britain a treaty 
guaranteeing the free use of the Panama Canal on equal 
terms to the ships of all nations, while reserving to ourselves 
the right to police and fortify the canal, and therefore to 
control it in time of war. Under this treaty we are in honor 
bound to arbitrate the question of canal tolls for coastwise 
traffic between the Western and Eastern coasts of the 
United States. I believe that the American position as 
regards this matter is right ; but I also believe that under the 
arbitration treaty we are in honor bound to submit the 
matter to arbitration in view of Great Britain's contention 
• — ■ although I hold it to be an unwise contention — that our 
position is unsound. I emphatically disbelieve in making 
universal arbitration treaties which neither the makers nor 
any one else would for a moment dream of keeping. I no 
less emphatically insist that it is our duty to keep the lim- 
ited and sensible arbitration treaties which we have already 
made. The importance of a promise lies not in making 
it, but in keeping it ; and the poorest of all positions for a 
nation to occupy in such a matter is readiness to make 
impossible promises at the same time that there is failure 



THE PEACE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 583 

to keep promises which have been made, which can be 
kept, and which it is discreditable to break. 

During the early part of the year 1905, the strain on the 
civilized world caused by the Russo-Japanese War became 
serious. The losses of life and of treasure were frightful. 
From all the sources of information at hand, I grew most 
strongly to believe that a further continuation of the strug- 
gle would be a very bad thing for Japan, and an even worse 
thing for Russia. Japan was already suffering terribly 
from the drain upon her men, and especially upon her 
resources, and had nothing further to gain from contin- 
uance of the struggle ; its continuance meant to her more 
loss than gain, even if she were victorious. Russia, in spite 
of her gigantic strength, was, in my judgment, apt to lose 
even more than she had already lost if the struggle contin- 
ued. I deemed it probable that she would no more be able 
successfully to defend Eastern Siberia and Northern Man- 
churia than she had been able to defend Southern Man- 
churia and Korea. If the war went on, I thought it, on 
the whole, likely that Russia would be driven west of Lake 
Baikal. But it was very far from certain. There is no 
certainty in such a war. Japan might have met defeat, 
and defeat to her would have spelt overwhelming disaster ; 
and even if she had continued to win, what she thus won 
would have been of no value to her, and the cost in blood 
and money would have left her drained white. I believed, 
therefore, that the time had come when it was greatly to 
the interest of both combatants to have peace, and when 
therefore it was possible to get both to agree to peace. 

I first satisfied myself that each side wished me to act, 
but that, naturally and properly, each side was exceedingly 
anxious that the other should not believe that the action was 
taken on its initiative. I then sent an identical note to the 
two powers proposing that they should meet, through their 
representatives, to see if peace could not be made directly 
between them, and offered to act as an intermediary in 
bringing about such a meeting, but not for any other pur- 
pose. Each assented to my proposal in principle. There 
was difficulty in getting them to agree on a common meeting 




Copyright by Underwood and Underwood. 

Peace Commission at Portsmouth. 



THE PEACE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 585 

place ; but each finally abandoned its original contention 
in the matter, and the representatives of the two nations 
finally met at Portsmouth, in New Hampshire. I pre- 
viously received the two delegations at Oyster Bay on the 
U. S. S. Mayflower, which, together with another naval 
vessel, I put at their disposal, on behalf of the United States 
Government, to take them from Oyster Bay to Portsmouth. 
As is customary — but both unwise and undesirable — 
in such cases, each side advanced claims which the other 
could not grant. The chief difficulty came because of 
Japan's demand for a money indemnity. I felt that it 
would be better for Russia to pay some indemnity than to 
go on with the war, for there was little chance, in my judg- 
ment, of the war turning out favorably for Russia, and the 
revolutionary movement already under way bade fair to 
overthrow the negotiations entirely. I advised the Rus- 
sian Government to this effect, at the same time urging 
them to abandon their pretensions on certain other points, 
notably concerning the southern half of Saghelien, which the 
Japanese had taken. I also, however, and equally strongly, 
advised the Japanese that in my judgment it would be 
the gravest mistake on their part to insist on continuing 
the war for the sake of a money indemnity ; for Russia was 
absolutely firm in refusing to give them an indemnity, and 
the longer the war continued the less able she would be to 
pay. I pointed out that there was no possible analogy 
between their case and that of Germany in the war with 
France, which they were fond of quoting. The Germans 
held Paris and half of France, and gave up much territory 
in lieu of the indemnity, whereas the Japanese were still 
many thousand miles from Moscow, and had no territory 
whatever which they wished to give up. I also pointed 
out that in my judgment whereas the Japanese had enjoyed 
the sympathy of most of the civilized powers at the outset 
of and during the continuance of the war, they would for- 
feit it if they turned the war into one merely for getting 
money — and, moreover, they would almost certainly fail 
to get the money, and would simply find themselves at the 
end of a year, even if things prospered with them, in posses- 



586 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

slon of territory they did not want, having spent enormous 
additional sums of money, and lost enormous additional 
numbers of men, and yet without a penny of remuneration. 
The treaty of peace was finally signed. 

As Is Inevitable under such circumstances, each side felt 
that It ought to have got better terms ; and when the danger 
was well past each side felt that it had been over-reached 
by the other, and that If the war had gone on It would have 
gotten more than it actually did get. The Japanese Gov- 
ernment had been wise throughout, except in the matter of 
announcing that It would Insist on a money Indemnity. 
Neither In national nor In private affairs Is It ordinarily 
advisable to make a bluff which cannot be put through — 
personally, I never believe in doing it under any circum- 
stances. The Japanese people had been misled by this 
bluff of their Government ; and the unwisdom of the Gov- 
ernment's action In the matter was shown by the great 
resentment the treaty aroused in Japan, although it was so 
beneficial to Japan. There were various mob outbreaks, 
especially in the Japanese cities ; the police were roughly 
handled, and several Christian churches were burned, as 
reported to me by the American Minister. In both Russia 
and Japan I believe that the net result as regards myself 
was a feeling of injury, and of dislike of me, among the 
people at large. I had expected this ; I regarded it as en- 
tirely natural ; and I did not resent It In the least. The 
Governments of both nations behaved toward me not only 
with correct and entire propriety, but with much courtesy 
and the fullest acknowledgment of the good effect of what 
I had done ; and in Japan, at least, I believe that the leading 
men sincerely felt that I had been their friend. I had 
certainly tried my best to be the friend not only of the 
Japanese people but of the Russian people, and I believe 
that what I did was for the best interests of both and of the 
world at large. 

During the course of the negotiations I tried to enlist the 
aid of the Governments of one nation which was friendly to 
Russia, and of another nation which was friendly to Japan, 
in helping bring about peace. I got no aid from either. I 



THE PEACE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 



587 



did, however, receive aid from the Emperor of Germany. 
His Ambassador at St. Petersburg was the one Ambassador 
who helped the American Ambassador, Mr. Meyer, at del- 
icate and doubtful points of the negotiations. Mr. Meyer, 
who was, with the exception of Mr. White, the most useful 
diplomat in the American service, rendered literally inval- 
uable aid by insisting upon 
himself seeing the Czar at 
critical periods of the trans- 
action, when it was no 
longer possible for me to 
act successfully through the 
representatives of the Czar, 
who were often at cross pur- 
poses with one another. 

As a result of the Ports- 
mouth peace, I was given 
the Nobel Peace Prize. 
This consisted of a medal, 
which I kept, and a sum 
of ^40,000, which I turned 
over as a foundation of in- 
dustrial peace to a board 
of trustees which included 
Oscar Straus, Seth Low and 
John Mitchell. In the pres- 
ent state of the world's de- 
velopment industrial peace 
is even more essential than 
international peace ; and it 
was fitting and appropriate 

to devote the peace prize to such a purpose. In 1910, while 
in Europe, one of my most pleasant experiences was my visit 
to Norway, where I addressed the Nobel Committee, and set 
forth in full the principles upon which I had acted, not only 
in this particular case but throughout my administration. 

I received another gift which I deeply appreciated, an orig- 
inal copy of Sully's "Memoires" of "Henry le Grand," sent 
me with the following inscription (I translate it roughly) : 




George von Lengerke Meyer, Ambassa- 
dor Extraordinary and Plenipoten- 
tiary TO Russia. 



S88 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

" Paris, January, 1906. 

"The undersigned members of the French ParHamentary 
Group of International Arbitration and Conciliation have 
decided to tender President Roosevelt a token of their 
high esteem and their sympathetic recognition of the per- 
sistent and decisive initiative he has taken towards gradu- 
ally substituting friendly and judicial for violent methods 
in case of conflict between Nations. 

"They believe that the action of President Roosevelt, 
which has realized the most generous hopes to be found In 
history, should be classed as a continuance of similar illus- 
trious attempts of former times, notably the project for 
international concord known under the name of the 'Great 
Design of Henry IV' in the memoirs of his Prime Minister, 
the Duke de Sully. In consequence they have sought out 
a copy of the first edition of these memoirs, and they take 
pleasure in offering it to him, with the request that he will 
keep it among his family papers." 

The signatures include those of Emile Loubet, A. Carnot, 
d'Estournelles de Constant, Aristide Briand, Sully Prud- 
homme, Jean Jaures, A. Fallieres, R. Poincare, and two or 
three hundred others. 

Of course what I had done in connection with the Ports- 
mouth peace was misunderstood by some good and sincere 
people. Just as after the settlement of the coal strike, there 
were persons who thereupon thought that it was in my 
power, and was my duty, to settle all other strikes, so after 
the peace of Portsmouth there were other persons — not 
only Americans, by the way, — who thought it my duty 
forthwith to make myself a kind of international Med- 
dlesome Mattie and interfere for peace and justice promis- 
cuously over the world. Others, with a delightful non- 
sequitur, jumped to the conclusion that inasmuch as I 
had helped to bring about a beneficent and necessary peace 
I must of necessity have changed my mind about war 
being ever necessary. A couple of days after peace was 
concluded I wrote to a friend: "Don't you be misled by 
the fact that just at the moment men are speaking well of 



THE PEACE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 589 

me. They will speak ill soon enough. As Loeb remarked 
to me to-day, some time soon I shall have to spank some 
little international brigand, and then all the well-meaning 
idiots will turn and shriek that this is inconsistent with 
what I did at the Peace Conference, whereas in reality it 
will be exactly in line with it." 

To one of my political opponents, Mr. Schurz, who wrote 
me congratulating me upon the outcome at Portsmouth, 
and suggesting that the time was opportune for a move 
towards disarmament, I answered in a letter setting forth 
views which I thought sound then, and think sound now. 
The letter ran as follows : 

Oyster Bay, N. Y., 
September 8, 1905. 

My dear Mr. Schurz: I thank you for your congratu- 
lations. As to what you say about disarmament — which 
I suppose is the rough equivalent of "the gradual diminu- 
tion of the oppressive burdens imposed upon the world by 
armed peace" — I am not clear either as to what can be 
done or what ought to be done. If I had been known as 
one of the conventional type of peace advocates I could have 
done nothing whatever in bringing about peace now, I 
would be powerless in the future to accomplish anything, 
and I would not have been able to help confer the boons 
upon Cuba, the Philippines, Porto Rico and Panama, 
brought about by our action therein. If the Japanese had 
not armed during the last twenty years, this would indeed 
be a sorrowful century for Japan. If this country had not 
fought the Spanish War; if we had failed to take the action 
we did about Panama ; all mankind would have been the 
loser. While the Turks were butchering the Armenians 
the European powers kept the peace and thereby added a 
burden of infamy to the Nineteenth Century, for in keeping 
that peace a greater number of lives were lost than in any 
European war since the days of Napoleon, and these lives 
were those of women and children as well as of men ; while 
the moral degradation, the brutality inflicted and endured, 
the aggregate of hideous wrong done, surpassed that of any 



590 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

war of which we have record In modern times. Until people 
get it firmly fixed in their minds that peace is valuable 
chiefly as a means to righteousness, and that it can only be 
considered as an end when it also coincides with righteous- 
ness, we can do only a limited amount to advance its coming 
on this earth. There Is of course no analogy at present 
between international law and private or municipal law, 
because there Is no sanction of force for the former, while 
there is for the latter. Inside our own nation the law- 
abiding man does not have to arm himself against the law- 
less simply because there is some armed force — the police, 
the sheriff's posse, the national guard, the regulars — which 
can be called out to enforce the laws. At present there is 
no similar international force to call on, and I do not as yet 
see how it could at present be created. Hitherto peace has 
often come only because some strong and on the whole just 
power has by armed force, or the threat of armed force, 
put a stop to disorder. In a very Interesting French book 
the other day I was reading how the Mediterranean was 
freed from pirates only by the "pax Britannica," established 
by England's naval force. The hopeless and hideous 
bloodshed and wickedness of Algiers and Turkestan was 
stopped, and could only be stopped, when civilized nations 
in the shape of Russia and France took possession of them. 
The same was true of Burma and the Malay States, as well 
as Egypt, with regard to England. Peace has come only 
as the sequel to the armed Interference of a civilized power 
which, relatively to its opponent, was a just and beneficent 
power. If England had disarmed to the point of being 
unable to conquer the Soudan and protect Egypt, so that the 
Mahdists had established their supremacy in northeastern 
Africa, the result would have been a horrible and bloody 
calamity to mankind. It was onlj^ the growth of the 
European powers in military efficiency that freed eastern 
Europe from the dreadful scourge of the Tartar and par- 
tially freed it from the dreadful scourge of the Turk. Unjust 
war is dreadful; a just war may be the highest duty. To 
have the best nations, the free and civilized nations, disarm 
and leave the despotisms and barbarisms with great mill- 



THE PEACE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 



591 



tary force, would be a calamity compared to which the ca- 
lamities caused by all the wars of the nineteenth century 
would be trivial. Yet it is not easy to see how we can 
by international agreement state exactly which power 
ceases to be free and civilized and which comes near the line 
of barbarism or despotism. For example, I suppose it 
would be very difficult to get Russia and Japan to come to 
a common agreement on this point; and there are at least 
some citizens of other na- 
tions, not to speak of their 
governments, whom it would 
also be hard to get together. 

This does not in the 
least mean that it is hope- 
less to make the effort. It 
may be that some scheme 
will be developed. Amer- 
ica, fortunately, can cor- 
dially assist in such an 
effort, for no one in his 
senses would suggest our 
disarmament; and though 
we should continue to per- 
fect our small navy and our 
minute army, I do not think 
it necessary to increase the 
number of our ships — at 
any rate as things look now 
— nor the number of our soldiers. Of course our navy must 
be kept up to the highest point of efficiency, and the replac- 
ing of old and worthless vessels by first-class new ones may 
involve an increase in the personnel ; but not enough to in- 
terfere with our action along the lines you have suggested. 
But before I would know how to advocate such action, save 
in some such way as commending it to the attention of The 
liague Tribunal, I would have to have a feasible and ra- 
tional plan of action presented. 

It seems to me that a general stop in the increase of the 
war navies of the world might be a good thing; but I would 




Model by G. Vigeland. 

Nobel Peace Prize Medallion. 

This is a direct reproduction of the reverse of 
the medallion which measures 2tb inches in 
diameter. On the edge appeared the words 
Parlamentum Norvegias MCMVI. 



592 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

not like to speak too positively offhand. Of course it is 
only in continental Europe that the armies are too large ; 
and before advocating action as regards them I should 
have to weigh matters carefully — including by the way 
such a matter as the Turkish army. At any rate nothing 
useful can be done unless with the clear recognition that 
we object to putting peace second to righteousness. 
Sincerely yours, 

Theodore Roosevelt. 

Hon. Carl Schurz, Bolton Landing, 
Lake George, N. Y. 



In my own judgment the most important service that I 
rendered to peace was the voyage of the battle fleet round 
the world. I had become convinced that for many reasons 
it was essential that we should have it clearly understood, 
by our own people especially, but also by other peoples, 
that the Pacific was as much our home waters as the Atlan- 
tic, and that our fleet could and would at will pass from one 
to the other of the two great oceans. It seemed to me 
evident that such a voyage would greatly benefit the navy 
itself; would arouse popular interest in and enthusiasm 
for the navy; and would make foreign nations accept as 
a matter of course that our fleet should from time to time 
be gathered in the Pacific, just as from time to time it was 
gathered in the Atlantic, and that its presence in one ocean 
was no more to be accepted as a mark of hostility to any 
Asiatic power than its presence in the Atlantic was to be 
accepted as a mark of hostility to any European power. 
I determined on the move without consulting the Cabinet, 
precisely as I took Panama without consulting the Cabinet. 
A council of war never fights, and in a crisis the duty of a 
leader is to lead and not to take refuge behind the generally 
timid wisdom of a multitude of councillors. At that time, 
as I happen to know, neither the English nor the German 
authorities believed it possible to take a fleet of great bat- 
tleships round the world. They did not believe that their 



SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL JUSTICE 593 

own fleets could perform the feat, and still less did they 
believe that the American fleet could. I made up my mind 
that it was time to have a show down in the matter ; because 
if it was really true that our fleet could not get from the At- 
lantic to the Pacific, it was much better to know it and be 
able to shape our policy in view of the knowledge. Many 
persons publicly and privately protested against the move 
on the ground that Japan would accept it as a threat. To 
this I answered nothing in public. In private I said that I 
did not believe Japan would so regard it because Japan knew 
my sincere friendship and admiration for her and realized that 
we could not as a Nation have any intention of attacking 
her ; and that if there were any such feeling on the part of 
Japan as was alleged that very fact rendered it imperative 
that that fleet should go. When in the spring of 1910 I was in 
Europe I was interested to find that high naval authorities 
in both Germany and Italy had expected that war would 
come at the time of the voyage. They asked me if I had 
not been afraid of it, and if I had not expected that hostil- 
ities would begin at least by the time that the fleet reached 
the Straits of Magellan ^ I answered that I did not expect 
it ; that I believed that Japan would feel as friendly in the 
matter as we did ; but that if my expectations had proved 
mistaken, it would have been proof positive that we were 
going to be attacked anyhow, and that in such event it 
would have been an enormous gain to have had the three 
months' preliminary preparation which enabled the fleet 
to start perfectly equipped. In a personal interview before 
they left I had explained to the officers in command that I 
believed the trip would be one of absolute peace, but that 
they were to take exactly the same precautions against 
sudden attack of any kind as if we were at war with all the 
nations of the earth ; and that no excuse of any kind would be 
accepted if there were a sudden attack of any kind and we 
were taken unawares. 

My prime purpose was to impress the American people; 
and this purpose was fully achieved. The cruise did make 
a very deep impression abroad ; boasting about what we 
have done does not impress foreign nations at all, except 

2Q 



THE PEACE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 595 

unfavorably, but positive achievement does ; and the two 
American achievements that really impressed foreign peoples 
during the first dozen years of this century were the digging 
of the Panama Canal and the cruise of the battle fleet 
round the world. But the impression made on our own 
people was of far greater consequence. No single thing 
in the history of the new United States Navy has done as 
much to stimulate popular interest and belief in it as the 
world cruise. This effect was forecast in a well-informed 
and friendly English periodical, the London Spectator. 
Writing in October, 1907, a month before the fleet sailed 
from Hampton Roads, the Spectator said : 

"All over America the people will follow the movements 
of the fleet ; they will learn something of the intricate details 
of the coaling and commissariat work under warlike condi- 
tions ; and in a word their attention will be aroused. Next 
time Mr. Roosevelt or his representatives appeal to the 
country for new battleships they will do so to people whose 
minds have been influenced one way or the other. The 
naval programme will not have stood still. We are sure that, 
apart from increasing the efficiency of the existing fleet, 
this is the aim which Mr. Roosevelt has in mind. He has 
a policy which projects itself far into the future, but it is an 
entire misreading of it to suppose that it is aimed narrowly 
and definitely at any single Power." 

I first directed the fleet, of sixteen battleships, to go 
round through the Straits of Magellan to San Francisco. 
From thence I ordered them to New Zealand and Australia, 
then to the Philippines, China and Japan, and home through 
Suez — they stopped in the Mediterranean to help the 
sufferers from the earthquake at Messina, by the way, and 
did this work as effectively as they had done all their other 
work. Admiral Evans commanded the fleet to San Fran- 
cisco; there Admiral Sperry took it; Admirals Thomas, 
Wainwright and Schroeder rendered distinguished service 
under Evans and Sperry. The coaling and other prep- 
arations were made in such excellent shape by the Depart- 
ment that there was never a hitch, not so much as the 
delay of an hour, in keeping every appointment made. 



596 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

All the repairs were made without difficulty, the ship con- 
cerned merely falling out of column for a few hours, and 
when the job was done steaming at speed until she regained 
her position. Not a ship was left in any port; and there 
was hardly a desertion. As soon as it was known that the 
voyage was to be undertaken men crowded to enlist, just 
as freely from the Mississippi Valley as from the seaboard, 
and for the first time since the Spanish War the ships put to 
sea overmanned — and by as stalwart a set of men-of- 
war's men as ever looked through a porthole, game for a 
fight or a frolic, but withal so self-respecting and with such 
a sense of responsibility that in all the ports in which they 
landed their conduct was exemplary. The fleet practiced 
incessantly during the voyage, both with the guns and in 
battle tactics, and came home a much more efficient fighting 
instrument than when it started sixteen months before. 
The best men of command rank in our own service were 
confident that the fleet would go round in safety, in spite 
of the incredulity of foreign critics. Even they, however, 
did not believe that it was wise to send the torpedo craft 
around. I accordingly acquiesced in their views, as it did not 
occur to me to consult the lieutenants. But shortly before 
the fleet started, I went in the Government yacht May- 
flower to inspect the target practice off Provlncetown. I 
was accompanied by two torpedo boat destroyers, in charge 
of a couple of naval lieutenants, thorough gamecocks ; 
and I had the two lieutenants aboard to dine one even- 
ing. Towards the end of the dinner they could not re- 
frain from asking if the torpedo flotilla was to go round 
with the big ships. I told them no, that the admirals 
and captains did not believe that the torpedo boats could 
stand it, and believed that the officers and crews aboard 
the cockle shells would be worn out by the constant pitching 
and bouncing and the everlasting need to make repairs. My 
two guests chorused an eager assurance that the boats 
could stand it. They assured me that the enlisted men 
were even more anxious to go than were the officers, men- 
tioning that on one of their boats the terms of enlistment 
of most of the crew were out, and the men were waiting to 



THE PEACE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 597 

see whether or not to reenlist, as they did not care to do so 
unless the boats were to go on the cruise. I answered that I 
was only too glad to accept the word of the men who were to 
do the job, and that they should certainly go ; and within 
half an hour I sent out the order for the flotilla to be got 
ready. It went round in fine shape, not a boat being laid 
up. I felt that the feat reflected even more credit upon the 
navy than did the circumnavigation of the big ships, and 
I wrote the flotilla commander the following letter : 



May 18, 1908. 
My dear Captain Cone: 

A great deal of attention has been paid to the feat of 
our battleship fleet in encircling South America and getting 
to San Francisco ; and it would be hard too highly to 
compliment the officers and enlisted men of that fleet for 
what they have done. Yet if I should draw any distinction 
at all it would be in favor of you and your associates who 
have taken out the torpedo flotilla. Yours was an even 
more notable feat, and every officer and every enlisted man 
in the torpedo boat flotilla has the right to feel that he 
has rendered distinguished service to the United States 
navy and therefore to the people of the United States ; and 
I wish I could thank each of them personally. Will you 
have this letter read by the commanding officer of each 
torpedo boat to his officers and crew t 

Sincerely yours, 

Theodore Roosevelt. 

Lieutenant Commander Hutch. I. Cone, U. S. N., 
Commanding Second Torpedo Flotilla, 
Care Postmaster, San Franscico, Cal. 



There were various amusing features connected with the 
trip. Most of the wealthy people and "leaders of opinion" 
in the Eastern cities were panic-struck at the proposal to take 
the fleet away from Atlantic waters. The great New York 



598 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

dailies issued frantic appeals to Congress to stop the fleet 
from going. The head of the Senate Committee on Naval 
Affairs announced that the fleet should not and could not go 
because Congress would refuse to appropriate the money — 
he being from an Eastern seaboard State. However, I an- 
nounced in response that I had enough money to take the 
fleet around to the Pacific anyhow, that the fleet would cer- 
tainly go, and that if Congress did not choose to appropriate 
enough money to get the fleet back, why, it would stay in 
the Pacific. There was no further difficulty about the 
money. 

It was not originally my intention that the fleet should 
visit Australia, but the Australian Government sent a most 
cordial invitation, which I gladly accepted ; for I have, as 
every American ought to have, a hearty admiration for, 
and fellow feeling with, Australia, and I believe that America 
should be ready to stand back of Australia in any serious 
emergency. The reception accorded the fleet in Australia 
was wonderful, and it showed the fundamental community 
of feeling between ourselves and the great commonwealth 
of the South Seas. The considerate, generous, and open- 
handed hospitality with which the entire Australian people 
treated our officers and men could not have been surpassed 
had they been our own countrymen. The fleet first visited 
Sidney, which has a singularly beautiful harbor. The day 
after the arrival one of our captains noticed a member of 
his crew trying to go to sleep on a bench in the park. He 
had fixed above his head a large paper with some lines 
evidently designed to forestall any questions from friendly 
would-be hosts : " I am delighted with the Australian people. 
I think your harbor the finest in the world. I am very tired 
and would like to go to sleep." 

The most noteworthy incident of the cruise was the re- 
ception given to our fleet in Japan. In courtesy and good 
breeding, the Japanese can certainly teach much to the 
nations of the Western world. I had been very sure that 
the people of Japan would understand aright what the 
cruise meant, and would accept the visit of our fleet as the 
signal honor which it was meant to be, a proof of the high 



THE PEACE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 599 

regard and friendship I felt, and which I was certain the 
American people felt, for the great Island Empire. The 
event even surpassed my expectations. I cannot too 
strongly express my appreciation of the generous courtesy 
the Japanese showed the ofRcers and crews of our fleet ; 
and I may add that every man of them came back a friend 
and admirer of the Japanese. Admiral Sperry wrote me a 
letter of much interest, dealing not only with the reception 
in Tokio but with the work of our men at sea ; I herewith give 
it almost in full : 

28 October, 1908. 
Dear Mr. Roosevelt: 

My official report of the visit to Japan goes forward in 
this mail, but there are certain aspects of the aff"air so success- 
fully concluded which cannot well be included in the report. 

You are perhaps aware that Mr. Denison of the Japanese 
Foreign Office was one of my colleagues at The Hague, 
for whom I have a very high regard. Desiring to avoid 
every possibility of trouble or misunderstanding, I wrote 
to him last June explaining fully the character of our men, 
which they have so well lived up to, the desirability of ample 
landing places, guides, rest houses and places for changing 
money in order that there might be no delay In getting the 
men away from the docks on the excursions in which they 
delight. Very few of them go into a drinking place, except 
to get a resting place not to be found elsewhere, paying for 
it by taking a drink. 

I also explained our system of landing with liberty men 
an unarmed patrol, properly officered, to quietly take in 
charge and send off to their ships any men who showed the 
slightest trace of disorderly conduct. This letter he showed 
to the Minister of the Navy, who highly approved of all 
our arrangements, including the patrol, of which I feared 
they might be jealous. Mr. Denison's reply reached me in 
Manila, with a memorandum from the Minister of the Navy 
which removed all doubts. Three temporary piers were built 
for our boat landings, each 300 feet long, brilliantly lighted 
and decorated. The sleeping accommodations did not permit 



6oo THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



two or three thousand sailors to remain on shore, but the 
ample landings permitted them to be handled night and day 
with perfect order and safety. 

At the landings and railroad station in Yokohama there 
were rest houses or booths, reputable money changers 

and as many as a 

thousand English- 
speaking Japanese 
college students acted 
as volunteer guides, 
besides Japanese sail- 
ors and petty ofhcers 
detailed for the pur- 
pose. In Tokyo there 
were a great many 
excellent refreshment 
places, where the men 
got excellent meals 
and could rest, smoke 
and write letters, and 
in none of these places 
would they allow the 
men to pay anything, 
though they were 
more than ready to 
do so. The arrange- 
ments were marvel- 
ously perfect. 

As soon as your tele- 
gram of October i8, 
giving the address to 
be made to the Em- 
peror, was received, I gave copies of it to our Ambassador 
to be sent to the Foreign Office. It seems that the Emperor 
had already prepared a very cordial address to be forwarded 
through me to you, after delivery at the audience, but your 
telegram reversed the situation and his reply was prepared. 
I am convinced that your kind and courteous initiative on 
this occasion helped cause the pleasant feeling which was so 




Copyright by Underwood and Underwood. 
Senator Lodge. 



THE PEACE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 6oi 

obvious in the Emperor's bearing at the luncheon which fol- 
lowed the audience. X., who is reticent and conservative, 
told me that not only the Emperor but all the Ministers 
were profoundly gratified by the course of events. I am 
confident that not even the most trifling incident has taken 
place which could in any way mar the general satisfaction, 
and our Ambassador has expressed to me his great satisfac- 
tion with all that has taken place. 

Owing to heavy weather encountered on the passage 
up from Manila the fleet was obliged to take about 3500 
tons of coal. 

The Yankton remained behind to keep up communica- 
tion for a few days, and yesterday she transmitted the 
Emperor's telegram to you, which was sent in reply to your 
message through our Ambassador after the sailing of the 
fleet. It must be profoundly gratifying to you to have the 
mission on which you sent the fleet terminate so happily, 
and I am profoundly thankful that, owing to the confi- 
dence which you displayed in giving me this command, my 
active career draws to a close with such honorable distinction. 

As for the effect of the cruise upon the training, discipline 
and effectiveness of the fleet, the good cannot be exaggerated. 
It is a war game in every detail. The wireless communica- 
tion has been maintained with an efficiency hitherto unheard 
of. Between Honolulu and Auckland, 3850 miles, we were 
out of communication with a cable station for only one night, 
whereas three [non-American] men-of-war trying recently to 
maintain a chain of only 1250 miles, between Auckland and 
Sydney, were only able to do so for a few hours. 

The officers and men as soon as we put to sea turn to 
their gunnery and tactical work far more eagerly than they 
go to functions. Every morning certain ships leave the 
column and move ofl" seven or eight thousand yards as targets 
for range measuring fire control and battery practice for 
the others, and at night certain ships do the same thing for 
night battery practice. I am sorry to say that this practice 
is unsatisfactory, and in some points misleading, owing to 
the fact that the ships are painted white. At Portland, in 
1903, I saw Admiral Barker's white battleships under the 



6o2 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

searchlights of the army at a distance of 14,000 yards, 
seven sea miles, without glasses, while the Hartford, a black 
ship, was never discovered at all, though she passed within 
a mile and a half. I have for years, while a member of the 
General Board, advocated painting the ships war color at 
all times, and by this mail I am asking the Department to 
make the necessary change in the Regulations and paint the 
ships properly, I do not know that any one now dissents 
from my view. Admiral Wainwright strongly concurs, 
and the War College Conference recommended it year after 
year without a dissenting voice. 

In the afternoons the fleet has two or three hours' 
practice at battle maneuvers, which excite as keen interest 
as gunnery exercises. 

The competition in coal economy goes on automatically 
and reacts in a hundred ways. It has reduced the waste 
in the use of electric light and water, and certain chief 
engineers are said to keep men ranging over the ships all 
night turning out every light not in actual and immediate use. 
Perhaps the most important effect is the keen hunt for de- 
fects in the machinery causing waste of power. The 
Yankton by resetting valves increased her speed from 
10 to 11^ knots on the same expenditure. 

All this has been done, but the field is widening, the work 
has only begun. 

:): H< H: H< ^ 4: H: 

C. S. Sperry. 

When I left the Presidency I finished seven and a half 
years of administration, during which not one shot had been 
fired against a foreign foe. We were at absolute peace, and 
there was no nation in the world with whom a war cloud 
threatened, no nation in the world whom we had wronged, 
or from whom we had anything to fear. The cruise of the 
battle fleet was not the least of the causes which ensured 
so peaceful an outlook. 

When the fleet returned after its sixteen months' voyage 
around the world I went down to Hampton Roads to greet 



THE PEACE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 



603 



it. The day was Washington's Birthday, February 22, 1907. 
Literally on the minute the homing battlecraft came into 
view. On the flagship of the Admiral I spoke to the officers 
and enlisted men, as follows : 

^^ Admiral Sperry, Officers and Men of the Battle Fleet: 

"Over a year has passed since you steamed out of this 




President Roosevelt and the Gun Pointers of the U. S. Battleship Missouri. 



harbor, and over the world's rim, and this morning the 
hearts of all who saw you thrilled with pride as the hulls 
of the mighty warships lifted above the horizon. You 
have been in the Northern and the Southern Hemispheres ; 
four times you have crossed the line ; you have steamed 
through all the great oceans ; you have touched the coast 
of every continent. Ever your general course has been 
westward ; and now you come back to the port from which 



THE PEACE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 605 

you set sail. This is the first battle fleet that has ever cir- 
cumnavigated the globe. Those who perform the feat again 
can but follow in your footsteps. 

"The little torpeo flotilla went with you around South 
America, through the Straits of Magellan, to our own Pacific 
Coast. The armored cruiser squadron met you, and left 
you again, when you were half way round the world. 
You have falsified every prediction of the prophets of failure. 
In all your long cruise not an accident worthy of mention 
has happened to a single battleship, nor yet to the cruisers 
or torpedo boats. You left this coast in a high state of battle 
efficiency, and you return with your efficiency increased ; 
better prepared than when you left, not only in personnel but 
even in material. During your world cruise you have taken 
your regular gunnery practice, and skilled though you were 
before with the guns, you have grown more skilful still ; 
and through practice you have improved in battle tactics, 
though here there is more room for improvement than in 
your gunnery. Incidentally, I suppose I need hardly say 
that one measure of your fitness must be your clear recog- 
nition of the need always steadily to sLrive to render your- 
selves more fit ; if you ever grow to think that you are fit 
enough, you can make up your minds that from that moment 
you will begin to go backward. 

"As a war machine, the fleet comes back in better shape 
than it went out. In addition, you, the officers and men of 
this formidable fighting force, have shown yourselves the 
best of all possible ambassadors and heralds of peace. 
Wherever you have landed you have borne yourselves so 
as to make us at home proud of being your countrymen. 
You have shown that the best type of fighting man of the sea 
knows how to appear to the utmost possible advantage when 
his business is to behave himself on shore, and to make a 
good impression in a foreign land. We are proud of all the 
ships and all the men in this whole fleet, and we welcome you 
home to the country whose good repute among nations 
has been raised by what you have done." 



APPENDIX A 

THE TRUSTS, THE PEOPLE, AND THE SQUARE DEAL 

[Written when Mr. Taft's administration brought suit to dissolve the steel cor- 
poration, one of the grounds for the suit being the acquisition by the Corporation 
of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company; this action was taken, with my ac- 
quiescence, while I was President, and while Mr. Taft was a member of my cab- 
inet; at the time he never protested against, and as far as I knew approved of my 
action in this case, as in the Harvester Trust case, and all similar cases.] 

The suit against the Steel Trust by the Government has brought 
vividly before our people the need of reducing to order our chaotic 
Government policy as regards business. As President, in Messages 
to Congress I repeatedly called the attention of that body and of 
the public to the inadequacy of the Anti-Trust Law by itself to 
meet business conditions and secure justice to the people, and to 
the further fact that it might, if left unsupplemented by additional 
legislation, work mischief, with no compensating advantage; and 
I urged as strongly as I knew how that the policy followed with 
relation to railways in connection with the Liter-State Commerce 
Law should be followed by the National Government as regards all 
great business concerns ; and therefore that, as a first step, the 
powers of the Bureau of Corporations should be greatly enlarged, 
or else that there should be created a Governmental board or com- 
mission, with powers somewhat similar to those of the Inter-State 
Commerce Commission, but covering the whole field of inter- 
State business, exclusive of transportation (which should, by 
law, be kept wholly separate from ordinary industrial business, 
all common ownership of the industry and the railway being for- 
bidden). In the end I have always believed that it would also 
be necessary to give the National Government complete power 
over the organization and capitalization of all business concerns 
engaged in inter-State commerce. 

A member of my Cabinet with whom, even more than with the 
various Attorneys-General, I went over every detail of the trust 
situation, was the one time Secretary of the Interior, Mr. James R. 

606 



APPENDIX A 607 

Garfield. He writes me as follows concerning the suit against the 
Steel Corporation : 

"■ Nothing appeared before the House Committee that made me 
believe we were deceived by Judge Gary. 

" This, I think, is a case that shows clearly the difference between 
destructive litigation and constructive legislation. I have not yet 
seen a full copy of the Government's petition, but our papers give 
nothing that indicates any kind of unfair or dishonest competition 
such as existed in both the Standard Oil and Tobacco Cases. 
As I understand it, the competitors of the Steel Company have 
steadily increased in strength during the last six or seven years. 
Furthermore, the per cent of the business done by the Steel Cor- 
poration has decreased during that time. As you will remember, 
at our first conference with Judge Gary, the Judge stated that it 
was the desire and purpose of the Company to conform to what the 
Government wished, it being the purpose of the Company abso- 
lutely to obey the law both in spirit and letter. Throughout the 
time that I had charge of the investigation, and while we were in 
Washington, I do not know of a single instance where the Steel 
Company refused any information requested ; but, on the con- 
trary, aided in every possible way our investigation. 

"The position now taken by the Government is absolutely de- 
structive of legitimate business, because they outline no rule of con- 
duct for business of any magnitude. It is absurd to say that the 
courts can lay down such rules. The most the courts can do is to 
find as legal or illegal the particular transactions brought before 
them. Hence, after years of tedious litigation there would be no 
clear-cut rule for future action. This method of procedure is deal- 
ing with the device, not the result, and drives business to the 
elaboration of clever devices, each of which must be tested in the 
courts. 

" I have yet to find a better method of dealing with the anti-trust 
situation than that suggested by the bill which we agreed upon in 
the last days of your Administration. That bill should be used as 
a basis for legislation, and there could be incorporated upon it 
whatever may be determined wise regarding the direct control 
and supervision of the National Government, either through a 
commission similar to the Inter-State Commerce Commission or 
otherwise." 

Before taking up the matter in its large aspect, I wish to say one 
word as to one feature of the Government suit against the Steel 
Corporation. One of the grounds for the suit is the acquisition by 
the Steel Corporation of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company; 



6o8 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

and it has been alleged, on the authority of the Government 
officials engaged in carrying on the suit, that as regards this 
transaction I was misled by the representatives of the Steel 
Corporation, and that the facts were not accurately or truth- 
fully laid before me. This statement is not correct. I believed 
at the time that the facts in the case were as represented to me 
on behalf of the Steel Corporation, and my further knowledge 
has convinced me that this was true. I believed at the time 
that the representatives of the Steel Corporation told me the 
truth as to the change that would be worked in the percent- 
age of the business which the proposed acquisition would give 
the Steel Corporation, and further inquiry has convinced me 
that they did so. I was not misled. The representatives of 
the Steel Corporation told me the truth as to what the 
effect of the action at that time would be, and any statement 
that I was misled or that the representatives of the Steel 
Corporation did not thus tell me the truth as to the facts of the 
case is itself not in accordance with the truth. In The Outlook of 
August 19 last I gave in full the statement I had made to the 
Investigating Committee of the House of Representatives on this 
matter. That statement is accurate, and I reaffirm everything I 
therein said, not only as to what occurred, but also as to my belief 
in the wisdom and propriety of my action — indeed, the action 
not merely was wise and proper, but it would have been a calamity 
from every standpoint had I failed to take it. On page 137 of the 
printed report of the testimony before the Committee will be found 
Judge Gary's account of the meeting between himself and Mr. 
Frick and Mr. Root and myself. This account states the facts 
accurately. It has been alleged that the purchase by the Steel 
Corporation of the property of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Com- 
pany gave the Steel Corporation practically a monopoly of the 
Southern iron ores — that is, of the iron ores south of the Potomac 
and the Ohio. My information, which I have every 'reason to 
believe is accurate and not successfully to be challenged, is that, 
of these Southern iron ores the Steel Corporation has, including 
the property gained from the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company, 
less than 20 per cent — perhaps not over 16 per cent. This is a 
very much smaller percentage than the percentage it holds of the 
Lake Superior ores, which even after the surrender of the Hill lease 
will be slightly over 50 per cent. According to my view, therefore, 
and unless — which I do not believe possible — these figures can be 
successfully challenged, the acquisition of the Tennessee Coal and 
Iron Company's ores in no way changed the situation as regards 



APPENDIX A 609 

making the Steel Corporation a monopoly.^ The showing as to the 
percentage of production of all kinds of steel ingots and steel cast- 
ings in the United States by the Steel Corporation and by all other 
manufacturers respectively makes an even stronger case. It 
makes the case even stronger than I put it in my testimony before 
the Investigating Committee, for I was scrupulously careful to 
make statements that erred, if at all, against my own position. It 
appears from the figures of production that in 1901 the Steel Cor- 
poration had to its credit nearly 66 per cent of the total produc- 
tion as against a little over 34 per cent by all other steel manu- 
facturers. The percentage then shrank steadily, until in 1906, 
the year before the acquisition of the Tennessee Coal and Iron 
properties, the percentage was a little under 58 per cent. In spite 
of the acquisition of these properties, the following year, 1907, 
the total percentage shrank slightly, and this shrinking has con- 
tinued until in 1910 the total percentage of the Steel Corporation 
is but a little over 54 per cent, and the percentage by all other steel 
manufacturers but a fraction less than 46 per cent. Of the 54yo 
per cent produced by the Steel Corporation i^ per cent is 
produced by the former Tennessee Coal and Iron Company. In 
other words, these figures show that the acquisition of the Tennes- 
see Coal and Iron Company did not in the slightest degree change 
the situation, and that during the ten years which include the 
acquisition of these properties by the Steel Corporation the per- 
centage of total output of steel manufacturers in this country by the 
Steel Corporation has shrunk from nearly 66 per cent to but a 
trifle over 54 per cent. I do not believe that these figures can be 
successfully controverted, and if not successfully controverted they 
show clearly not only that the acquisition of the Tennessee Coal 
and Iron properties wrought no change in the status of the Steel 
Corporation, but that the Steel Corporation during the decade has 
steadily lost, instead of gained, in monopolistic character. 

So much for the facts in this particular case. Now for the 
general subject. When my Administration took office, I found, 
not only that there had been little real enforcement of the Anti- 
Trust Law and but little more effective enforcement of the Inter- 
State Commerce Law, but also that the decisions were so chaotic 
and the laws themselves so vaguely drawn, or at least interpreted 
in such widely varying fashions, that the biggest business men 

1 My own belief is that our Nation should long ago have adopted the policy of 
merely leasing for a term of years mineral-bearing land ; but it is the fault of us 
ourselves, of the people, not of the Steel Corporation, that this policy has not been 
adopted. 



6io THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

tended to treat both laws as dead letters. The series of actions by 
which we succeeded in making the Inter-State Commerce Law an 
efficient and most useful instrument in regulating the transporta- 
tion of the country and exacting justice from the big railways with- 
out doing them injustice — while, indeed, on the contrary, securing 
them against injustice — need not here be related. The Anti- 
Trust Law it was also necessary to enforce as it had never hitherto 
been enforced; both because it was on the statute-books and be- 
cause it was imperative to teach the masters of the biggest corpora- 
tions in the land that they were not, and would not be permitted 
to regard themselves as, above the law. Moreover, where the 
combination has really been gulity of misconduct the law serves a 
useful purpose, and in such cases as those of the Standard Oil and 
Tobacco Trusts, if effectively enforced, the law confers a real and 
great good. 

Suits were brought against the most powerful corporations in the 
land, which we were convinced had clearly and beyond question 
violated the Anti-Trust Law. These suits were brought with 
great care, and only where we felt so sure of our facts that we 
could be fairly certain that there was a likelihood of success. As a 
matter of fact, in most of the important suits we were successful. 
It was imperative that these suits should be brought, and very real 
good was achieved by bringing them, for it was only these suits 
that made the great masters of corporate capital in America fully 
realize that they were the servants and not the masters of the peo- 
ple, that they were subject to the law, and that they would not be 
permitted to be a law unto themselves ; and the corporations 
against which we proceeded had sinned, not merely by being big 
(which we did not regard as in itself a sin), but by being guilty of 
unfair practices towards their competitors, and by procuring 
unfair advantages from the railways. But the resulting situa- 
tion has made it evident that the Anti-Trust Law is not 
adequate to meet the situation that has grown up because of 
modern business conditions and the accompanying tremendous 
increase in the business use of vast quantities of corporate 
wealth. As I have said, this was already evident to my mind 
when I was President, and in communications to Congress I 
repeatedly stated the facts. But when I made these communi- 
cations there were still plenty of people who did not believe that 
we would succeed in the suits that had been instituted against 
the Standard Oil, the Tobacco, and other corporations, and it 
was impossible to get the public as a whole to realize what the 
situation was. Sincere zealots who believed that all combinations 



APPENDIX A 6ii 

could be destroyed and the old-time conditions of unregulated 
competition restored, insincere politicians who knew better but 
made believe that they thought whatever their constituents 
wished them to think, crafty reactionaries who wished to see on 
the statute-books laws which they believed unenforceable, and 
the almost solid "Wall Street crowd" or representatives of "big 
business" who at that time opposed with equal violence both 
wise and necessary and unwise and improper regulation of 
business — all fought against the adoption of a sane, effective, 
and far-reaching policy. 

It is a vitally necessary thing to have the persons in control of 
big trusts of the character of the Standard Oil Trust and Tobacco 
Trust taught that they are under the law, just as it was a necessary 
thing to have the Sugar Trust taught the same lesson in drastic 
fashion by Mr. Henry L. Stimson when he was United States 
District Attorney in the city of New York. But to attempt to 
meet the whole problem not by administrative governmental 
action but by a succession of lawsuits is hopeless from the stand- 
point of working out a permanently satisfactory solution. More- 
over, the results sought to be achieved are achieved only in ex- 
tremely insufficient and fragmentary measure by breaking up all 
big corporations, whether they have behaved well or ill, into a 
number of little corporations which it is perfectly certain will be 
largely, and perhaps altogether, under the same control. Such 
action is harsh and mischievous if the corporation is guilty of noth- 
ing except its size; and where, as in the case of the Standard Oil, 
and especially the Tobacco, trusts, the corporation has been guilty 
of immoral and anti-social practices, there is need for far more 
drastic and thoroughgoing action than any that has been taken, 
under the recent decree of the Supreme Court. In the case of the 
Tobacco Trust, for instance, the settlement in the Circuit Court, 
in which the representatives of the Government seem inclined to 
concur, practically leaves all of the companies still substantially 
under the control of the twenty-nine original defendants. Such a 
result is lamentable from the standpoint of justice. The decision 
of the Circuit Court, if allowed to stand, means that the Tobacco 
Trust has merely been obliged to change its clothes, that none of 
the real offenders have received any real punishment, while, as the 
New York Times, a pro-trust paper, says, the tobacco concerns, 
in their new clothes, are in positions of "ease and luxury," and 
"immune from prosecution under the law." 

Surely, miscarriage of justice is not too strong a term to apply to 
such a result when considered in connection with what the Supreme 



6i2 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

Court said of this Trust. That great Court in its decision used 
language which, in spite of its habitual and severe self-reStraint 
in stigmatizing wrong-doing, yet unhesitatingly condemns the 
Tobacco Trust for moral turpitude, saying that the case shows an 
"ever present manifestation ... of conscious wrong-doing" by 
the Trust, whose history is "replete with the doing of acts which it 
was the obvious purpose of the statute to forbid, . . . demon- 
strative of the existence from the beginning of a purpose to acquire 
dominion and control of the tobacco trade, not by the mere exertion 
of the ordinary right to contract and to trade, but by methods de- 
vised in order to monopolize the trade by driving competitors out of 
business, which were ruthlessly carried out upon the assumption 
that to work upon the fears or play upon the cupidity of competitors 
would make success possible." The letters from and to various 
officials of the Trust, which were put in evidence, show a literally 
astounding and horrifying indulgence by the Trust in wicked and 
depraved business methods — such as the "endeavor to cause a 
strike in their [a rival business firm's] factory," or the "shutting 
off the market" of an independent tobacco firm by "taking the 
necessary steps to give them a warm reception," or forcing import- 
ers into a price agreement by causing and continuing "a demoral- 
ization of the business for such length of time as may be deemed 
desirable" (I quote from the letters). A Trust guilty of such con- 
duct should be absolutely disbanded, and the only way to prevent 
the repetition of such conduct is by strict Government supervision, 
and not merely by lawsuits. 

The Anti-Trust Law cannot meet the whole situation, nor can 
any modification of the principle of the Anti-Trust Law avail to 
meet the whole situation. The fact is that many of the men who 
have called themselves Progressives, and who certainly believe 
that they are Progressives, represent in reality in this matter not 
progress at all but a kind of sincere rural toryism. These men 
believe that it is possible by strengthening the Anti-Trust Law to 
restore business to the competitive conditions of the middle of the 
last century. Any such effort is foredoomed to end in failure, and, 
if successful, would be mischievous to the last degree. Business 
cannot be successfully conducted in accordance with the practices 
and theories of sixty years ago unless we abolish steam, electricity, 
big cities, and, in short, not only all modern business and modern 
industrial conditions, but all the modern conditions of our civiliza- 
tion. The effort to restore competition as it was sixty years ago, 
and to trust for justice solely to this proposed restoration of com- 
petition, is just as foolish as if we should go back to the flintlocks of 



APPENDIX A 613 

Washington's Continentals as a substitute for modern weapons of 
precision. The effort to prohibit all combinations, good or bad, 
is bound to fail, and ought to fail ; when made, it merely means 
that some of the worst combinations are not checked and that 
honest business is checked. Our purpose should be, not to strangle 
business as an incident of strangling combinations, but to regulate 
big corporations in thoroughgoing and effective fashion, so as to 
help legitimate business as an incident to thoroughly and com- 
pletely safeguarding the interests of the people as a whole. Against 
all such increase of Government regulation the argument is raised 
that it would amount to a form of Socialism. This argument is 
familiar; it is precisely the same as that which was raised against 
the creation of the Inter-State Commerce Commission, and of all 
the different utilities commissions in the different States, as I my- 
self saw, thirty years ago, when I was a legislator at Albany, and 
these questions came up in connection with our State Government. 
Nor can action be effectively taken by any one State. Congress 
alone has power under the Constitution effectively and thoroughly 
and at all points to deal with inter-State commerce, and where 
Congress, as it should do, provides laws that will give the Nation 
full jurisdiction over the whole field, then that jurisdiction be- 
comes, of necessity, exclusive — although until Congress does act 
affirmatively and thoroughly it is idle to expect that the States will 
or ought to rest content with non-action on the part of both 
Federal and State authorities. This statement, by the way, applies 
also to the question of "usurpation" by any one branch of our 
Government of the rights of another branch. It is contended that 
in these recent decisions the Supreme Court legislated ; so it did ; 
and it had to ; because Congress had signally failed to do its duty 
by legislating. For the Supreme Court to nullify an act of the Legis- 
lature as unconstitutional except on the clearest grounds is usurpa- 
tion ; to interpret such an act in an obviously wrong sense is usur- 
pation ; but where the legislative body persistently leaves open a 
field which it is absolutely imperative, from the public standpoint, 
to fill, then no possible blame attaches to the official or officials 
who step in because they have to, and who then do the needed 
work in the interest of the poeple. The blame in such cases lies 
with the body which has been derelict, and not with the body 
which reluctantly makes good the dereliction. 

A quarter of a century ago. Senator Cushman K. Davis, a states- 
man who amply deserved the title of statesman, a man of the high- 
est courage, of the sternest adherence to the principles laid down 
by an exacting sense of duty, an unflinching believer in democracy, 



6i4 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

who was as little to be cowed by a mob as by a plutocrat, and more- 
over a man who possessed the priceless gift of imagination, a gift 
as important to a statesman as to a historian, in an address de- 
livered at the annual commencement of the University of Michigan 
on July I, 1886, spoke as follows of corporations : 

" Feudalism, with its domains, its untaxed lords, their retainers, 
its exemptions and privileges, made war upon the aspiring spirit of 
humanity, and fell with all its grandeurs. Its spirit walks the earth 
and haunts the institutions of to-day, in the great corporations, 
with the control of the National highways, their occupation of 
great domains, their power to tax, their cynical contempt for the 
law, their sorcery to debase most gifted men to the capacity of 
splendid slaves, their pollution of the ermine of the judge and the 
robe of the Senator, their aggregation in one man of wealth so 
enormous as to make Croesus seem a pauper, their picked, paid, 
and skilled retainers who are summoned by the message of elec- 
tricity and appear upon the wings of steam. If we look into the 
origin of feudalism and of the modern corporations — those 
Dromios of history — we find that the former originated in a 
strict paternalism, which is scouted by modern economists, and 
that the latter has grown from an unrestrained freedom of action, 
aggression, and development, which they commend as the very 
ideal of political wisdom. Laissez-faire, says the professor, when 
it often means bind and gag that the strongest may work his will. 
It is a plea for the survival of the fittest — for the strongest male 
to take possession of the herd by a process of extermination. _ If 
we examine this battle cry of political polemics, we find that it is 
based upon the conception of the divine right of property, and the 
preoccupation by older or more favored or more alert or richer 
men or nations, of territory, of the forces of nature, of machinery, 
of all the functions of what we call civilization. Some of these 
men, who are really great, follow these conceptions to their con- 
clusions with dauntless intrepidity." 

When Senator Davis spoke, few men of great power had the 
sympathy and the vision necessary to perceive the menace con- 
tained in the growth of corporations ; and the men who did see the 
evil were struggling blindly to get rid of it, not by frankly meeting 
the new situation with new methods, but by insisting upon the 
entirely futile effort to abolish what modern conditions had ren- 
dered absolutely inevitable. Senator Davis was under no such 
illusion. He realized keenly that it was absolutely impossible to go 
back to an outworn social status, and that we must abandon defi- 
nitely the laissez-faire theory of political economy, and fearlessly 



APPENDIX A 615 

champion a system of increased Governmental control, paying no 
heed to the cries of the worthy people who denounce this as 
Socialistic. He saw that, in order to meet the inevitable increase 
in the power of corporations produced by modern industrial 
conditions, it would be necessary to increase in like fashion the 
activity of the sovereign power which alone could control such 
corporations. As has been aptly said, the only way to meet a 
billion-dollar corporation is by invoking the protection of a hun- 
dred-billion-dollar government; in other words, of the National 
Government, for no State Government is strong enough both to do 
justice to corporations and to exact justice from them. Said 
Senator Davis in this admirable address, which should be re- 
printed and distributed broadcast : 

"The liberty of .the individual has been annihilated by the logical 
process constructed to maintain it. We have come to a political 
deification of Mammon. Laissez-faire is not utterly blameworthy. 
It begat modern democracy, and made the modern republic possible. 
There can be no doubt of that. But there it reached its limit of 
political benefaction, and began to incline toward the point where 
extremes meet. . . . To every assertion that the people in their 
collective capacity of a government ought to exert their indefeasi- 
ble right of self-defense, it is said you touch the sacred rights of 
property." 

The Senator then goes on to say that we now have to deal with 
an oligarchy of wealth, and that the Government must develop 
power sufficient enough to enable it to do the task. 

Few will dispute the fact that the present situation is not satis- 
factory, and cannot be put on a permanently satisfactory basis 
unless we put an end to the period of groping and declare for a 
fixed policy, a policy which shall clearly define and punish wrong- 
doing, which shall put a stop to the iniquities done in the name of 
business, but which shall do strict equity to business. We de- 
mand that big business give the people a square deal ; in return 
we must insist that when any one engaged in big business honestly 
endeavors to do right he shall himself be given a square deal ; 
and the first, and most elementary, kind of square deal is to give 
him in advance full information as to just what he can, and what 
he cannot, legally and properly do. It is absurd, and much worse 
than absurd, to treat the deliberate lawbreaker as on an exact par 
with the man eager to obey the law, whose only desire is to find 
out from some competent Governmental authority what the law 
is, and then to live up to it. Moreover, it is absurd to treat the 
size of a corporation as in itself a crime. As Judge Hook says in 



6i6 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

his opinion in the Standard Oil Case : "Magnitude of business does 
not alone constitute a monopoly . . . the genius and industry of 
man when kept to ethical standards still have full play, and what 
he achieves is his . . . success and magnitude of business, the 
rewards of fair and honorable endeavor [are not forbidden] . . . 
[the public welfare is threatened only when success is attained] 
by wrongful or unlawful methods." Size may, and in my opinion 
does, make a corporation fraught with potential menace to the 
community; and may, and in my opinion should, therefore make 
it incumbent upon the community to exercise through its adminis- 
trative (not merely through its judicial) officers a strict supervision 
over that corporation in order to see that it does not go wrong; 
but the size In itself does not signify wrong-doing, and should not 
be held to signify wrong-doing. 

Not only should any huge corporation which has gained its 
position by unfair methods, and by Interference with the rights of 
others, by demoralizing and corrupt practices, in short, by sheer 
baseness and wrong-doing, be broken up, but it should be made the 
business of some administrative governmental body, by constant 
supervision, to see that it does not come together again, save under 
such strict control as shall Insure the community against all rep- 
etition of the bad conduct — and It should never be permitted 
thus to assemble its parts as long as these parts are under the con- 
trol of the original offenders, for actual experience has shown that 
these men are, from the standpoint of the people at large, unfit to 
be trusted with the power implied In the management of a large 
corporation. But nothing of Importance Is gained by breaking 
up a huge Inter-State and international industrial organization 
which has not offended otherwise than by its size, into a number of 
small concerns without any attempt to regulate the way In which 
those concerns as a whole shall do business. Nothing is gained by 
depriving the American Nation of good weapons wherewith to 
fight in the great field of international Industrial competition. 
Those who would seek to restore the days of unlimited and uncon- 
trolled competition, and who believe that a panacea for our Indus- 
trial and economic Ills to is be found In the mere breaking up of all 
big corporations, simply because they are big, are attempting 
not only the Impossible, but what, If possible, would be undesirable. 
They are acting as we should act if we tried to dam the Mississippi, 
to stop Its flow outright. The effort would be certain to result in 
failure and disaster; we would have attempted the impossible, 
and so would have achieved nothing, or worse than nothing. But 
by building levees along the Mississippi, not seeking to dam the 



APPENDIX A 617 

stream, but to control it, we are able to achieve our object and to 
confer inestimable good in the course of so doing. 

This Nation should definitely adopt the policy of attacking, not 
the mere fact of combination, but the evils and wrong-doing which 
so frequently accompany combination. The fact that a combina- 
tion is very big is ample reason for exercising a close and jealous 
supervision over it, because its size renders it potent for mischief; 
but it should not be punished unless it actually does the mischief; 
it should merely be so supervised and controlled as to guarantee us, 
the people, against its doing mischief. We should not strive for a 
policy of unregulated competition and of the destruction of all big 
corporations, that is, of all the most efficient business industries in 
the land. Nor should we persevere in the hopeless experiment of 
trying to regulate these industries by means only of lawsuits, 
each lasting several years, and of uncertain result. We should 
enter upon a course of supervision, control, and regulation of these 
great corporations — a regulation which we should not fear, if neces- 
sary, to bring to the point of control of monopoly prices, just as in 
exceptional cases railway rates are now regulated. Either the 
Bureau of Corporations should be authorized, or some other govern- 
mental body similar to the Inter-State Commerce Commission 
should be created, to exercise this supervision, this authoritative 
control. When once immoral business practices have been elim- 
inated by such control, competition will thereby be again re- 
vived as a healthy factor, although not as formerly an all-suffi- 
cient factor, in keeping the general business situation sound. 
Wherever immoral business practices still obtain — as they ob- 
tained in the cases of the Standard Oil Trust and Tobacco Trust 
— the Anti-Trust Law can be invoked ; and wherever such a 
prosecution is successful, and the courts declare a corporation to 
possess a monopolistic character, then that corporation should 
be completely dissolved, and the parts ought never to be again 
assembled save on whatever terms and under whatever conditions 
may be imposed by the governmental body in which is vested the 
regulatory power. Methods can readily be devised by which 
corporations sincerely desiring to act fairly and honestly can on 
their own initiative come under this thoroughgoing administra- 
tive control by the Government and thereby be free from the work- 
ing of the Anti-Trust Law. But the law will remain to be invoked 
against wrongdoers ; and under such conditions it could be 
invoked far more vigorously and successfully than at present. 

It is not necessary in an article like this to attempt to work out 
such a plan in detail. It can assuredly be worked out. Moreover, 



6i8 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

in my opinion, substantially some such plan must be worked out or 
business chaos will continue. Wrongdoing such as was perpe- 
trated by the Standard Oil Trust, and especially by the Tobacco 
Trust, should not only be punished, but if possible punished in the 
persons of the chief authors and beneficiaries of the wrong, far 
more severely than at present. But punishment should not be the 
only, or indeed the main, end in view. Our aim should be a policy 
of construction and not one of destruction. Our aim should not 
be to punish the men who have made a big corporation successful 
merely because they have made it big and successful, but to exer- 
cise such thoroughgoing supervision and control over them as to 
insure their business skill being exercised in the interest of the 
public and not against the public interest. Ultimately, I believe 
that this control should undoubtedly indirectly or directly extend to 
dealing with all questions connected with their treatment of their 
employees, including the wages, the hours of labor, and the like. 
Not only is the proper treatment of a corporation, from the stand- 
point of the managers, shareholders, and employees, compatible 
with securing from that corporation the best standard of public 
service, but when the effort is wisely made it results in benefit both 
to the corporation and to the public. The success of Wisconsin in 
dealing with the corporations within her borders, so as both to 
do them justice and to exact justice in return from them toward the 
public, has been signal ; and this Nation should adopt a progres- 
sive policy in substance akin to the progressive policy not merely 
formulated in theory but reduced to actual practice with such 
striking success in Wisconsin. 

To sum up, then. It is practically impossible, and, if possible, it 
would be mischievous and undesirable, to try to break up all com- 
binations merely because they are large and successful, and to put 
the business of the country back into the middle of the eighteenth 
century conditions of intense and unregulated competition between 
small and weak business concerns. Such an effort represents not 
progressiveness but an unintelligent though doubtless entirely 
well-meaning toryism. Moreover, the effort to administer a law 
merely by lawsuits and court decisions is bound to end in signal 
failure, and meanwhile to be attended with delays and uncer- 
tainties, and to put a premium upon legal sharp practice. Such 
an effort does not adequately punish the guilty, and yet works 
great harm to the innocent. Moreover, it entirely fails to give 
the publicity which is one of the best by-products of the system 
of control by administrative officials ; publicity, which is not onl_,' 
good in itself, but furnishes the data for whatever further action 



APPENDIX A 619 

may be necessary. We need to formulate immediately and 
definitely a policy which, in dealing with big corporations that 
behave themselves and which contain no menace save what is 
necessarily potential in any corporation which is of great size and 
very well managed, shall aim not at their destruction but at their 
regulation and supervision, so that the Government shall control 
them in such fashion as amply to safeguard the interests of the 
whole public, including producers, consumers, and wage-workers. 
This control should, if necessary, be pushed in extreme cases to the 
point of exercising control over monopoly prices, as rates on rail- 
ways are now controlled ; although this is not a power that should 
be used when it is possible to avoid it. The law should be clear, 
unambiguous, certain, so that honest men may not find that unwit- 
tingly they have violated it. In short, our aim should be, not to 
destroy, but effectively and in thoroughgoing fashion to regulate 
and control, in the public interest, the great instrumentalities of 
modern business, which it is destructive of the general welfare of 
the community to destroy, and which nevertheless it is vitally 
necessary to that general welfare to regulate and control. Com- 
petition will remain as a very important factor when once we have 
destroyed the unfair business methods, the criminal interference 
with the rights of others, which alone enabled certain swollen 
combinations to crush out their competitors — and, incidentally, 
the "conservatives" will do well to remember that these unfair and 
iniquitous methods by great masters of corporate capital have 
done more to cause popular discontent with the propertied classes 
than all the orations of all the Socialist orators in the country put 
together. 

I have spoken above of Senator Davis's admirable address de- 
livered a quarter of a century ago. Senator Davis's one-time 
partner, Frank B. Kellogg, the Government counsel who did so 
much to win success for the Government in its prosecutions of the 
trusts, has recently delivered before the Palimpsest Club of Omaha 
an excellent address on the subject ; Mr. Prouty, of the Inter- 
State Commerce Commission, has recently, in his speech before 
the Congregational Club of Brooklyn, dealt with the subject from 
the constructive side; and in the proceedings of the American Bar 
Association for 1904 there is an admirable paper on the need of 
thoroughgoing Federal control over corporations doing an inter- 
State business, by Professor Horace L. Wilgus, of the University 
of Michigan. The National Government exercises control over 
inter-State commerce railways, and it can in similar fashion, 
through an appropriate governmental body, exercise control over 



620 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

all industrial organizations engaged in inter-State commerce. 
This control should be exercised, not hy the courts, but by an 
administrative bureau or board such as the Bureau of Corporations 
or the Inter-State Commerce Commission; for the courts cannot 
with advantage permanently perform executive and administrative 
functions. 




Brass Buddha. 

Presented to President Roosevelt 
by Dalai Lama. 



APPENDIX B 

TPIE CONTROL OF CORPORATIONS AND "THE NEW 

FREEDOM" 

In his book "The New Freedom," and in the magazine articles of 
which it is composed, which appeared just after he had been inau- 
gurated as President, Mr. Woodrow Wilson made an entirely 
unprovoked attack upon me and upon the Progressive party in con- 
nection with what he asserts the policy of that party to be concern- 
ing the trusts, and as regards my attitude while President about 
the trusts. 

I am reluctant to say anything whatever about President Wilson 
at the outset of his Administration unless I can speak of him with 
praise. I have scrupulously refrained from saying or doing one 
thing since election that could put the slightest obstacle, even of 
misinterpretation, in his path. It is to the interest of the country 
that he should succeed in his office. I cordially wish him success, 
and I shall cordially support any policy of his that I believe to be in 
the interests of the people of the United States. But when Mr. 
Wilson, after being elected President, within the first fortnight 
after he has been inaugurated into that high oifice, permits himself 
to be betrayed into a public misstatement of what I have said, 
and what I stand for, then he forces me to correct his statements. 

Mr. Wilson opens his article by saying that the Progressive 
"doctrine is that monopoly is inevitable, and that the only course 
open to the people of the United States is to submit to it." This 
statement is without one particle of foundation in fact. I chal- 
lenge him to point out a sentence in the Progressive platform or in 
any speech of mine which bears him out. I can point him out any 
number which flatly contradict him. We have never made any 
such statement as he alleges about monopolies. We have said : 
"The corporation is an essential part of modern business. The 
concentration of modern business, in some degree, is both inev- 
itable and necessary for National and international business effi- 
ciency." Does Mr. Wilson deny this ? Let him answer yes or no, 
directly. It is easy for a politician detected in a misstatement to 

621 



622 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

take refuge in evasive rhetorical hyperbole. But Mr. Wilson is 
President of the United States, and as such he is bound to candid 
utterance on every subject of public interest which he himself has 
broached. If he disagrees with us, let him be frank and consistent, 
and recommend to Congress that all corporations be made illegal. 
Mr. Wilson's whole attack is largely based on a deft but far from 
ingenuous confounding of what we have said of monopoly, which 
we propose so far as possible to abolish, and what we have said of 
big corporations, which we propose to regulate ; Mr. Wilson's own 
vaguely set forth proposals being to attempt the destruction of 
both in ways that would harm neither. In our platform we use 
the word "monopoly" but once, and then we speak of it as an 
abuse of power, coupling it with stock-watering, unfair competition 
and unfair privileges. Does Mr. Wilson deny this I If he does, 
then where else will he assert that we speak of monopoly as he says 
we do ? He certainly owes the people of the United States a 
plain answer to the question. In my speech of acceptance I said : 
"We favor strengthening the Sherman Law by prohibiting agree- 
ments to divide territory or limit output; refusing to sell to cus- 
tomers who buy from business rivals ; to sell below cost in certain 
areas while maintaining higher prices in other places ; using the 
power of transportation to aid or injure special business concerns; 
and all other unfair trade practices." The platform pledges us to 
"guard and keep open equally to all, the highways of American 
commerce." This is the exact negation of monopoly. Unless 
Mr. Wilson is prepared to show the contrary, surely he is bound in 
honor to admit frankly that he has been betrayed into a misrepre- 
sentation, and to correct it. 

Mr. Wilson says that for sixteen years the National Administra- 
tion has "been virtually under the regulation of the trusts," and 
that the big business men "have already captured the Govern- 
ment." Such a statement as this might perhaps be pardoned as 
mere rhetoric in a candidate seeking office — although it is the 
kind of statement that never under any circumstances have I 
permitted myself to make, whether on the stump or off the stump, 
about any opponent, unless I was prepared to back it up with 
explicit facts. But there is an added seriousness to the charge 
when it is made deliberately and in cold blood by a man who is at 
the time President. In this volume I have set forth my relations 
with the trusts. I challenge Mr. Wilson to controvert anything 
I have said, or to name any trusts or any big business men who reg- 
ulated, or in any shape or way controlled, or captured, the Govern- 
ment during my term as President. He must furnish specifications 



APPENDIX B 623 

if his words are taken at their face value — and I venture to say in 
advance that the absurdity of such a charge is patent to all my 
fellow-citizens, not excepting Mr. Wilson. 

Mr. Wilson says that the new party was founded "under the 
leadership of Mr. Roosevelt, with the conspicuous aid — I mention 
him with no satirical intention, but merely to set the facts down 
accurately — of Mr. George W. Perkins, organizer of the Steel 
Trust." Whether Mr. Wilson's intention was satirical or not is of 
no concern; but I call his attention to the fact that he has con- 
spicuously and strikingly failed "to set the facts down accurately." 
Mr. Perkins was not the organizer of the Steel Trust, and when it 
was organized he had no connection with it or with the Morgan 
people. This is well known, and it has again and again been 
testified to before Congressional committees controlled by Mr. 
Wilson's friends who were endeavoring to find out something 
against Mr. Perkins. If Mr. Wilson does not know that my state- 
ment is correct, he ought to know it, and he is not to be excused 
for making such a misstatement as he has made when he has not a 
particle of evidence in support of it. Mr. Perkins was from the 
beginning in the Harvester Trust but, when Mr. Wilson points 
out this fact, why does he not add that he was the only man in that 
trust who supported me, and that the President of the trust ar- 
dently supported Mr. Wilson himself ? It isdisingenuoustoendeavor 
to conceal these facts, and to mislead ordinary citizens about them. 
Under the administrations of both Mr. Taft and Mr. Wilson, Mr. 
Perkins has been singled out for special attack, obviously not 
because he belonged to the Harvester and Steel Trusts, but because 
he alone among the prominent men of the two corporations fear- 
lessly supported the only party which afforded any real hope of 
checking the evil of the trusts. 

Mr. Wilson states that the Progressives have "a programme per- 
fectly agreeable to monopolies." 

The plain and unmistakable inference to be drawn from this and 
other similar statements in his article, and the inference which he 
obviously desired to have drawn, is that the big corporations ap- 
proved the Progressive plan and supported the Progressive can- 
didate. If President Wilson does not know perfectly well that this 
is not the case, he is the only intelligent person in the United 
States who is thus ignorant. Everybody knows that the over- 
whelming majority of the heads of the big corporations supported 
him or Mr. Taft. It is equally well known that of the corporations 
he mentions, the Steel and the Harvester Trusts, there was but 
one man who took any part in the Progressive campaign, and that 



624 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

almost all the others, some thirty in number, were against us, and 
some of them, including the President of the Harvester Trust, 
openly and enthusiastically for Mr. Wilson himself. If he reads 
the newspapers at all, he must know that practically every man 
representing the great financial interests of the country, and 
without exception every newspaper controlled by Wall Street or 
State Street, actively supported either him or Mr. Taft, and showed 
perfect willingness to accept either if only they could prevent the 
Progressive party from coming into power and from putting its 
platform into effect. 

Mr. Wilson says of the trust plank in that platform that it "did 
not anywhere condemn monopoly except in words." Exactly of 
what else could a platform consist ? Does Mr. Wilson expect us 
to use algebraic signs ^ This criticism is much as if he said the 
Constitution or the Declaration of Independence contained nothing 
but words. The Progressive platform did contain words, and the 
words were admirably designed to express thought and meaning 
and purpose. Mr. Wilson says that I long ago "classified trusts for 
us as good and bad," and said that I was "afraid only of the bad 
ones." Mr. Wilson would do well to quote exactly what my lan- 
guage was, and where it was used, for I am at a loss to know what 
statement of mine it is to which he refers. But if he means that I 
say that corporations can do well, and that corporations can also 
do ill, he is stating my position correctly. I hold that a corpora- 
tion does ill if it seeks profit in restricting production and then by 
extorting high prices from the community by reason of the scarcity 
of the product ; through adulterating, lyingly advertising, or over- 
driving the help ; or replacing men workers with children ; or by 
rebates ; or in any illegal or improper manner driving competitors 
out of its way; or seeking to achieve monopoly by illegal or 
unethical treatment of its competitors, or in any shape or way 
offending against the moral law either in connection with the 
public or with its employees or with its rivals. Any corporation 
which seeks its profit in such fashion is acting badly. It is, in fact, 
a conspiracy against the public welfare which the Government 
should use all its powers to suppress. If, on the other hand, a 
corporation seeks profit solely by increasing its products through 
eliminating waste, improving its processes, utilizing its by-products, 
installing better machines, raising wages in the effort to secure more 
efficient help, introducing the principle of cooperation and mutual 
benefit, dealing fairly with labor unions, setting its face against the 
underpayment of women and the employment of children ; in a 
word, treating the public fairly and its rivals fairly : then such a 



APPENDIX B 625 

corporation is behaving well. It is an instrumentality of civiliza- 
tion operating to promote abundance by cheapening the cost of 
living so as to improve conditions everywhere throughout the 
whole community. Does Air. Wilson controvert either of these 
statements ? If so, let him answer directly. It is a matter of 
capital importance to the country that his position in this respect 
be stated directly, not by indirect suggestion. 

Much of Mr. Wilson's article, although apparently aimed at the 
Progressive party, is both so rhetorical and so vague as to need no 
answer. He does, however, specifically assert (among other things 
equally without warrant in fact) that the Progressive party says 
that it is "futile to undertake to prevent monopoly," and only 
ventures to ask the trusts to be "kind" and "pitiful" ! It is a 
little difficult to answer a misrepresentation of the facts so radical 
— not to say preposterous — with the respect that one desires to 
use in speaking of or to the President of the United States. I 
challenge President Wilson to point to one sentence of our platform 
or of my speeches which affords the faintest justification for these 
assertions. Having made this statement in the course of an un- 
provoked attack on me, he cannot refuse to show that it is true. I 
deem it necessary to emphasize here (but with perfect respect) 
that I am asking for a plain statement of fact, not for a display of 
rhetoric. I ask him, as is my right under the circumstances, to 
quote the exact language which justifies him in attributing these 
views to us. If he cannot do this, then a frank acknowledgment 
on his part is due to himself and to the people. I quote from the 
Progressive platform: "Behind the ostensible Government sits 
enthroned an invisible Government, owing no allegiance and ac- 
knowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this 
invisible Government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between 
corrupt business and corrupt politics, is the first task of the states- 
manship of the day. . . . This country belongs to the people. 
Its resources, its business, its laws, its institutions, should be 
utilized, maintained, or altered in whatever manner will best 
promote the general interest." This assertion is explicit. We say 
directly that "the people" are absolutely to control in any way 
they see fit, the "business" of the country. I again challenge Mr. 
Wilson to quote any words of the platform that justify the state- 
ments he has made to the contrary. If he cannot do it — and of 
course he cannot do it, and he must know that he cannot do it — 
surely he will not hesitate to say so frankly. 

Mr. Wilson must know that every monopoly in the United 
States opposes the Progressive party. If he challenges this state- 
2 s 



626 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

ment, I challenge him in return (as is clearly my right) to name the 
monopoly that did support the Progressive party, whether it was 
the Sugar Trust, the Steel Trust, the Harvester Trust, the Standard 
Oil Trust, the Tobacco Trust, or any other. Every sane man in 
the country knows well that there is not one word of justification 
that can truthfully be adduced for Mr. Wilson's statement that 
the Progressive programme was agreeable to the monopolies. Ours 
was the only programme to which they objected, and they sup- 
ported either Mr. Wilson or Mr. Taft against me, indifferent as to 
which of them might be elected so long as I was defeated. Mr. 
Wilson says that I got my "idea with regard to the regulation of 
monopoly from the gentlemen who form the United States Steel 
Corporation." Does Mr. Wilson pretend that Mr. Van Hise and 
Mr. Croly got their ideas from the Steel Corporation .'' Is Mr. 
Wilson unaware of the elementary fact that most modern econo- 
mists believe that unlimited, unregulated competition is the source 
of evils which all men now concede must be remedied if this 
civilization of ours is to survive .'' Is he ignorant of the fact that 
the Socialist party has long been against unlimited competition ? 
This statement of Mr. Wilson cannot be characterized properly 
with any degree of regard for the office Mr. Wilson holds. Why, 
the ideas that I have championed as to controlling and regulating 
both competition and combination in the interest of the people, so 
that the people shall be masters over both, have been in the air in 
this country for a quarter of a century. I was merely the first 
prominent candidate for President who took them up. They are 
the progressive ideas, and progressive business men must in the 
end come to them, for I firmly believe that in the end all wise and 
honest business men, big and little, will support our programme. 
Mr. Wilson in opposing them is the mere apostle of reaction. He 
says that I got my "ideas from the gentlemen who form the 
Steel Corporation." I did not. But I will point out to him some- 
thing in return. It was he himself, and Mr. Taft, who got the 
votes and the money of these same gentlemen, and of those in the 
Harvester Trust. 

Mr. Wilson has promised to break up all trusts. He can do so 
only by proceeding at law. If he proceeds at law, he can hope 
for success only by taking what I have done as a precedent. In 
fact, what I did as President is the base of every action now taken 
or that can be now taken looking toward the control of corporations, 
or the suppression of monopolies. The decisions rendered in 
various cases brought by my direction constitute the authority on 
which Mr. Wilson must base any action that he may bring to 



APPENDIX B 627 

curb monopolistic control. Will Mr. Wilson deny this, or ques- 
tion it in any way ^ With what grace can he describe my Admin- 
istration as satisfactory to the trusts when he knows that he can- 
not redeem a single promise that he has made to war upon the 
trusts unless he avails himself of weapons of which the Federal 
Government had been deprived before I became President, and 
which were restored to it during my Administration and through 
proceedings which I directed .? Without my action Mr. Wilson 
could not now undertake or carry on a single suit against a monop- 
oly, and, moreover, if it had not been for my action and for the 
judicial decision in consequence obtained, Congress would be 
helpless to pass a single law against monopoly. 

Let Mr. Wilson mark that the men who organized and directed 
the Northern Securities Company were also the controlling forces 
in the very Steel Corporation which Mr. Wilson makes believe to 
think was supporting me. I challenge Air. Wilson to deny this, 
and yet he well knew that it was my successful suit against the 
Northern Securities Company which first efficiently established 
the power of the people over the trusts. 

After reading Mr. Wilson's book, I am still entirely in the dark 
as to what he means by the "New Freedom." Mr. Wilson is an 
accomplished and scholarly man, a master of rhetoric, and the 
sentences in the book are well-phrased statements, usually incul- 
cating a morality which is sound although vague and ill defined. 
There are certain proposals (already long set forth and practiced 
by me and by others who have recently formed the Progressive 
party) made by Mr. Wilson with which I cordially agree. There 
are, however, certain things he has said, even as regards matters 
of abstract morality, with which I emphatically disagree. For 
example, in arguing for proper business publicity, as to which I 
cordially agree with Mr. Wilson, he commits himself to the follow- 
ing statement : 

"You know there is temptation in loneliness and secrecy. 
Haven't you experienced it ^ I have. We are never so proper in 
our conduct as when everybody can look and see exactly what we 
are doing. If you are off in some distant part of the world and sup- 
pose that nobody who lives within a mile of your home is any- 
where around, there are times when you adjourn your ordinary 
standards. You say to yourself, 'Well, I'll have a fling this time; 
nobody will know anything about it.' If you were on the Desert 
of Sahara, you would feel that you might permit yourself — well, 
say, some slight latitude of conduct ; but if you saw one of your 
immediate neighbors coming the other way on a camel, you would 



628 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

behave yourself until he got out of sight. The most dangerous 
thing in the world is to get off where nobody knows you. I advise 
you to stay around among the neighbors, and then you may keep 
out of jail. That is the only way some of us can keep out of jail." 

I emphatically disagree with what seems to be the morality in- 
culcated in this statement, which is that a man is expected to do 
and is to be pardoned for doing all kinds of immoral things if he 
does them alone and does not expect to be found out. Surely it 
is not necessary, in insisting upon proper publicity, to preach a 
morality of so basely material a character. 

There is much more that Mr. Wilson says as to which I do not 
understand him clearly, and where I condemn what I do understand. 
In economic matters the course he advocates as part of the "New 
Freedom" simply means the old, old "freedom" of leaving the 
individual strong man at liberty, unchecked by common action, to 
prey on the weak and the helpless. The "New Freedom" in the 
abstract seems to be the freedom of the big to devour the little. 
In the concrete I may add that Mr. Wilson's misrepresentations of 
what I have said seem to indicate that he regards the new freedom 
as freedom from all obligation to obey the Ninth Commandment. 

But, after all, my views or the principles of the Progressive party 
are of much less importance now than the purposes of Mr. Wilson. 
These are wrapped in impenetrable mystery. His speeches 
and writings serve but to make them more obscure. If these 
attempts to refute his misrepresentation of my attitude towards 
the trusts should result in making his own clear, then this discus- 
sion will have borne fruits of substantial value to the country. If 
Mr. Wilson has any plan of his own for dealing with the trusts, 
it is to suppress all great industrial organizations — ■ presumably 
on the principle proclaimed by his Secretary of State four years 
ago, that every corporation which produced more than a certain 
percentage of a given commodity — I think the amount specified 
was twenty-five per cent — no matter how valuable its service, 
should be suppressed. The simple fact is that such a plan is 
futile. In operation it would do far more damage than it could 
remedy. The Progressive plan would give the people full control 
of, and in masterful fashion prevent all wrongdoing by, the trusts, 
while utilizing for the public welfare every industrial energy and 
ability that operates to swell abundance, while obeying strictly the 
moral law and the law of the land. Mr. Wilson's plan would 
ultimately benefit the trusts and would permanently damage 
nobody but the people. For example, one of the steel corporations 
which has been guilty of the worst practices towards its employees 



APPENDIX B 629 

is the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. Mr. Wilson and Mr. 
Bryan's plan would, if successful, merely mean permitting four 
such companies, absolutely uncontrolled, to monopolize every 
big industry in the country. To talk of such an accomplish- 
ment as being "The New Freedom" is enough to make the term 
one of contemptuous derision. 

President Wilson has made explicit promises, and the Demo- 
cratic platform has made explicit promises. Mr. Wilson is now in 
power, with a Democratic Congress in both branches. He and the 
Democratic platform have promised to destroy the trusts, to 
reduce the cost of living, and at the same to increase the well- 
being of the farmer and of the workingman — which of course must 
mean to increase the profits of the farmer and the wages of the 
workingman. He and his party won the election on this promise. 
We have a right to expect that they will keep it. If Mr. Wilson's 
promises mean anything except the very emptiest words, he is 
pledged to accomplish the beneficent purposes he avows by break- 
ing up all the trusts and combinations and corporations so as to 
restore competition precisely as it was fifty years ago. If he does 
not mean this, he means nothing. He cannot do anything else 
under penalty of showing that his promise and his performance do 
not square with each other. 

Mr. Wilson says that "the trusts are our masters now, but I for 
one do not care to live in a country called free even under kind 
masters." Good ! The Progressives are opposed to having mas- 
ters, kind or unkind, and they do not believe that a "new free- 
dom" which in practice would mean leaving four Fuel and Iron 
Companies free to do what they like in every industry would be of 
much benefit to the country. The Progressives have a clear and 
definite programme by which the people would be the masters of 
the trusts instead of the trusts being their masters, as Mr. Wilson 
says they are. With practical unanimity the trusts supported the 
opponents of this programme, Mr. Taft and Mr. Wilson, and they 
evidently dreaded our programme infinitely more than anything 
that Mr. Wilson threatened. The people have accepted Mr. 
Wilson's assurances. Now let him make his promises good. He 
is committed, if his words mean anything, to the promise to break 
up every trust, every big corporation — perhaps every small 
corporation — in the United States — not to go through the mo- 
tions of breaking them up, but really to break them up. He is 
committed against the policy (of efficient control and mastery of 
the big corporations both by law and by administrative action in 
cooperation) proposed by the Progressives. Let him keep faith 



630 THEODORE ROOSEVELT — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

with the people ; let him in good faith try to keep the promises 
he has thus repeatedly made. I believe that his promise is futile 
and cannot be kept. I believe that any attempt sincerely to keep 
it and in good faith to carry it out will end in either nothing at all 
or in disaster. But my beliefs are of no consequence. Mr. Wilson 
is President. It is his acts that are of consequence. He is bound in 
honor to the people of the United States to keep his promise, and 
to break up, not nominally but in reality, all big business, all trusts, 
all combinations of every sort, kind, and description, and probably 
all corporations. What he says is henceforth of little consequence. 
The important thing is what he does, and how the results of what 
he does square with the promises and prophecies he made when all 
he had to do was to speak, not to act. 



APPENDIX C 

THE BLAINE CAMPAIGN 

In "The House of Harper," written by J. Henry Harper, the 
following passage occurs : " Curtis returned from the convention 
in company with young Theodore Roosevelt and they discussed 
the situation thoroughly on their trip to New York and came to 
the conclusion that it would be very difficult to consistently sup- 
port Blaine. Roosevelt, however, had a conference afterward 
with Senator Lodge and eventually fell in line behind Blaine. 
Curtis came to our office and found that we were unanimously 
opposed to the support of Blaine, and with a hearty good-will he 
trained his editorial guns on the 'Plumed Knight' of Mulligan 
letter fame. His work was as effective and deadly as any fight he 
ever conducted in the Weekly.''^ This statement has no founda- 
tion whatever in fact. I did not return from the convention in 
company with Mr. Curtis. He went back to New York from the 
convention, whereas I went to my ranch in North Dakota. No 
such conversation as that ever took place between me and Mr. 
Curtis. In my presence, in speaking to a number of men at the 
time in Chicago, Mr. Curtis said : "You younger men can, if you 
think right, refuse to support Mr. Blaine, but I am too old a 
Republican, and have too long been associated with the party, to 
break with it now." Not only did I never entertain after the 
convention, but I never during the convention or at any other 
time, entertained the intention alleged in the quotation in ques- 
tion. I discussed the whole situation with Mr. Lodge before going 
to the convention, and we had made up our minds that if the 
nomination of Mr. Blaine was fairly made we would with equal 
good faith support him. 



631 



INDEX 



637 



European trips, 17, 23-26. 

Evans, Admiral Robley D., 230, 356, 

595- 
Evening Post, New York, on the Rough 

Riders, 249 n. 
Examinations, competitive, for Civil 

Service positions, 1 59-161. 
Executive, view of the, as peculiarly 

representative of the people as a 

whose, 306. 
Executive power, author's broadening 

of use of, as President, 388-397. 
Exercise, a necessity for men in sedentary 

pursuits, 46-47 ; forms of, taken by 

author, 47-54; in walking and riding. 

prescribed for army officers, 54-55 ; 

desirability of, for all city-dwellers, 

57-59- 



Fearlessness, acquisition of quality of, 

S9-6o. 
Ferris, Joseph A., 104, 127. 
Ferris, Sylvanus M., 104, 117, 118, 119, 

131- 

Fine Arts Council, 459. 

Fire prevention work of Forest Service, 
440. 

Fish, Hamilton, 391. 

Fitzsimmons, Bob, 50, 193. 

Fleet, world voyage of, 592-605. 

Flowers at Sagamore Hill, 343, 345. 

Foreign affairs, conduct of, during Presi- 
dency of author, 417, 419. 

Foreign policy, in case of Santo Domingo, 
548-552; settlement of trouble be- 
tween Venezuela and Germany, 552- 
553 ; concerning Colombia and the 
Panama Canal, 553-574. 

Forest Congress, First National, 437. 

Forest preservation in New York State, 

313, 3377339- 
Forests, national conservation of, 428 if., 

43S-437,_ 439 ff- 
Forest Service, educational work of the, 
436-437; placing of National Forests 
under care of, 437; strength of 



hostility to, 439-440; water-policy 

established by, 442-443. 
Fortnightly Review, quoted concerning 

men who worked with author while 

President, 386, 388. 
Fox, lawyer, 309. 
France, gift to author from, after peace 

of Portsmouth, 587-588. 
Franchise taxation in New York State, 

321 ff. 
Frankfurter, Assistant District-Attor- 
ney, 406, 486. 
Frauds in public lands, 405-406. 
Free silver platform, Bryan's, 297. 
Frick, H. C, 478, 479, 480, 481, 608. 
Fulton, Senator, 391-393, 440. 



G 



Gallantry among New York police, 
recognition of, 194-204. 

Game laws, enactment of, 460. 

Garfield, James R., 52, 401, 448, 471, 
490, 606-607; able administration 
of Interior Department by, 451. 

Garrett, Patrick, 132. 

Gary, E. H., 478, 479, 480, 481, 607, 608. 

Gerbracht, Ernest W., 486-487. 

Germany, boyhood days in, 25-26; aid 
of, in negotiations looking to settle- 
ment of Russo-Japanese War, 587. 

Gladstone, James Bulloch's views con- 
cerning, 16. 

Goddard, F. Norton, 339. 

Godkin, E. L., 221-222. 

Goethals, Colonel G. W., 571. 

GoflF, John, 46, 127. 

Goldfield mining difficulties, 408-411. 

Gompers, Samuel, 521. 

Goodrich, David, 266, 269. 

Gorgas, Dr., 571. 

Gorman, Senator, 153-154. 

Governors, conference of, at White 
House, 445. 

Governorship of New York, election to 
and activities during, 293-339. 

Grand Canon Game Preserve, 460. 



638 



INDEX 



Gray, Judge George, comment on 
author's action during coal strike, 
516 n. 

Greenway, Jack, 265, 269, 273. 

Grizzly bear, hunting the, 40, 41-42. 

Grey, Sir Edward, 349. 

Grosvenor, Congressman, 152. 

Guasimas, battle of, 256-261. 



H 



Hague conference on conservation, pro- 
posed, 448. 

Hague Court, carrying of cases before 
the, 553, 581-582. 

Hale, Senator, 382, 402, 454. 

Half-breed faction of Republican party, 

76, 95- 
Hamilton, Alexander, admiration for, 

73- 

Hampton Roads, arrival of battle fleet 
at, after world cruise, 602-605. 

Hanna, Mark, 169-170, 332, 333. 

Harriman railway corporations, suits 
.against the, 483. 

Harris, Joel Chandler, 347. 

Harvard, life at, 27-31. 

Havemeyer, Henry O., 486. 

Havemeyer & Elder Sugar Refinery 
frauds, 485-487. 

Hawkins, General, 243. 

Hay, John, letters from, 296, 420; 
cordial relations with, 419-420; 
mentioned, 563 ; quoted on author's 
action in the Panama matter, 569. 

Hayes, Johnny, 58. 

Hay-Herran Treaty, 554, 561. 

Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, 553, 561. 

Haywood, 409, 528 fl". 

Hazel, Judge, 294. 

Heike, Charles R., 486, 487 ; commuta- 
tion of sentence of, 487-489. 

Heney, Francis, 391, 405-406, 448. 

Hepburn, Congressman, 369-370, 384. 

Hepburn Rate Bill, 474-476. 

Herrig, Fred, 136-137. 

Hess, Jake, 64, 67-68. 



Heyer, New York policeman, 201. 
Hill, David B., 76, 209, 212, 302, 327. 
Hill, Professor A. S., 27. 
"History of the Naval War of 1812," 

_ 27, 224. 
Hitchcock, Secretary of the Interior, 

436, 448. 
Hitt, Representative, 384. 
"Homes Without Hands," Wood's, 21. 
Hook, Judge, quoted, 616. 
Hooker, Elon, 309, 310. 
Hornaday, W. T., 28. 
Horseback-riding, 34-35; as physical 

test for officers, 54-55. 
Hough, Judge, 391. 
Howe, Walter, 73. 
Howze, Lieutenant Robert L., 264, 

270; letters by, 282-283. 
Hubbard, Commander, 564. 
Hughes, Governor, 301, 320. 
Humphrey, Captain, 563. 
Hunt, Isaac, 73. 
Hunt, Jap, 124-125. 
Hunting experiences, 38-46. 
Hutch, Lieutenant-Commander, 597. 



I 



Indians, difficulties with, in the West, 
123-126; incident of Senator Quay 
and, 171-172; safeguarding welfare 
of the, 394. 

Indian timberlands, proper handling of, 
440-441. 

Individualism, limitations to, 175-176. 

Industrial conditions. Governmental 
oversight of, 174-175. 

Inland Waterways, Commission on, 401, 
444; trip of, down Mississippi River, 

445- 

Insurance business, correction of evils in, 
318-320. 

Internal aflPairs, author's scheme of ad- 
ministration of, while President, 

42C^42I. 

Inter-State Commerce Commission, 
strengthening of, by Hepburn Rate 



INDEX 



639 



Act, 474-477; mutual obligations of 

corporations and, 477. 
Italian, translation of "The Strenuous 

Life " into, 58. 
Itchen, birds in valley of the, 350. 

J 

Jackson-Lincoln theory of the Presi- 
dency, 394-397> 504- 

James River Dam Bill, veto of, 457. 

Japan, friendliness of, in Spanish War, 
237; feeling in, on settlement of 
Russo-Japanese War, 586; reception 
given American fleet in, 598-601. 

Japanese, translation of "The Strenuous 
Life" into, 58. 

Japanese in California, difhculties over, 
411-417. 

Jenkins, M. J., letter by, 286-287. 

Jew-baiting preacher, story of the, 205- 
206. 

Jiu-jitsu, 48. 

Joint Conservation Conference, 447-448. 

Jones, Sheriff Bill, 127-130, 131. 

Jusserand, Ambassador, anecdote con- 
cerning, 52. 

K 

Keep, Charles H., 399-400. 

Kellogg, Frank B., 406, 619. 

Kellor, Frances, 180. 

Kelly, Luther, 52, 54. 

Kelly, Peter, 73-76. 

Kent, General, 268. 

Kettle Hill, the fight at, 258, 282, 284. 

287, 290, 291. 
Knight Company case, 466-467, 468, 

469, 490. 
Knox, Attorney-General, 468. 
Kohrs, Conrad, 122. 
Kruse, Assemblyman and judge, 73. 



Labor, work in the interests of, 501-540. 
Labor-saving machinery, worker's right 
to share in profits of, 525-526. 



Labor unions, attitude toward, 221, 512, 

518-523- 

La Follette, quoted on author's services 
as President, 426-427. 

Lambert, Dr. Alexander, 376. 

Land fraud prosecutions, 405-406. 

Lane, Inter-State Commerce Com- 
missioner, 477. 

Larks, observations of, in England, 351- 
352. 

Law, study of and remarks on, 61-62. 

Lawton, General, 243, 260. 

Lee, Arthur, 216, 270. 

Leonard, Captain, 55. 

Leupp, Francis E., 394. 

Lewi, Dr. Maurice, 207. 

Lion hunting, 39-40. 

Littledale, St. George, 52. 

Little Missouri, life on the, 103-136. 

Llewellyn, Major, 137. 

Lodge, Henry Cabot, 150, 551; efforts 
of, in securing author's appoint- 
ment as Assistant Secretary of the 
Navy, 224; fearlessness of, in up- 
holding national honor and interest, 
230; cooperation of, with author, 
before Spanish War, 233 ; close rela- 
tions with, upon author's becoming 
President, 383-384. 

Loeb, William, Jr., 319, 379, 484, 485, 
486, 589. 

Long, John, boxing-master, 33. 

Lorimer, Senator, 167. 

Louisville and Nashville R. R. trouble, 

537-539- 
Low, Seth, 587. 
Ludlow, General, 268. 

M 

McBee, Silas, 340. 

McCall, John A., 318, 320. 

McCullagh, John, Chief of New York 

State Bureau of Elections, 334, 335. 
McCullough, John, police inspector, 206. 
MacFarlane, Federal District Attorney, 

309- 



640 



INDEX 



McGee, W J, 428-429. 

Mcllhenny, John, 401. 

McKinley, William, 150, 169, 224,546; 
death of, 379. 

Machine, the Republican, in New York 
State, 297-302. 

Machines, distinction between organiza- 
tions and, 164-167. 

Mahan, Captain, writings of, 226. 

Maine, blowing-up of the, 232. 

Maine woods, camping and hunting in 
the, 35-36. 

Marksmanship, degrees of, 36, 38; 
training of New York police in, 198; 
in the navy, 232-233. 

Maroquin, J. M., Colombian dictator, 
559-560, 561-563. 

Marriage, remarks on, 62, 176-184; 
advantage of early, 216. 

Marryat, books bv, 20; a lesson from, 
60. 

Marshall, body-servant, 261. 

Marshall, Vice-President, reported state- 
ment of, concerning author and 
battle of San Juan Hill, 280. 

"Marxism versus Socialism," Sim- 
khovitch's, 541-542. 

Maxwell, G. H., 428. 

Mayoralty campaign (1886), 144. 

Meat inspection law, 483. 

Merriam, Hart, 28, 29. 

Merrifield, William J., 106, 117, 118, 127. 

Mesa Verde National Park, 460. 

Meyer, George von L., 587, 106, 118, 
119, 120, 388. 

Miles, General, 253. 

Miller, printer, case of, 521, 523. 

Millet, Frank, 459. 

Mills, Lieutenant A. L., 261, 263, 270; 
letter by, 284. 

Minckwitz family, Dresden, 25-26. 

Mineral land laws, 449. 

Mines, Bureau of, 502. 

Mississippi River, trip of Inland Water- 
ways Commission down the, 445. 

Mitchell, John, 506, 507, 587. 

Mitchell, Senator, 448. 



Mondell, Congressman, 395, 431. 

Monroe Doctrine, author's interpre- 
tation of the, 546-547 ; application 
of, in cases of Venezuela, Santo 
Domingo, and Colombia and 
Panama, 547-571. 

Montauk Point, return of Cuban army 
to, 275. 

Moody, Attorney-General, 469, 476, 
483, 490, 503. 

Moosehead Lake, trip to, 33. 

Morgan, John, 228. 

Morley, John, 536. 

Morse, banker, case of, 406, 407, 487. 

Morton, Captain, 265. 

Morton, Paul, 473-474. 

Morton Hall, political meeting-place, 
63-64. 

Mosquito Inlet Reservation, 461. 

Mounted police. New York, 201. 

Mount Olympus National Monument, 
460. 

Moyer, 409, 528 ff. 

"Mr. Dooley," cited, 234. 

Muir, John, visit to the Yosemite with, 

347-349- 
Muir Woods, 460. 
Murdock, Congressman, 384. 
Murphy, Lieutenant, 563. 
Murray, Joseph, 64-70, 161. 
Murray, Lawrence, 411. 



N 



National Association of Manufacturers, 

532-533; 
National Bird Reservations, 461. 
National Bison Range, Montana, 461. 
National Child Labor Committee, 502. 
National Conservation, Commission on, 

402, 445, 447. 
National Guard of New York, author's 

service in, 250. 
National Guard training, advantages 

and shortcomings of, 250-251. 
National Monuments Act, 460. 
National Parks, creation of, 460. 



INDEX 



641 



Navy, appointment of author to Assist- 
ant Secretaryship of, 224 ; beginnings 
of our new, 226; condition of, be- 
fore opening of Spanish War, 226- 
227; preparation of, for the war, 
230-235; lessons learned by, from 
the war, 276; benefits to, from world 
cruise of fleet, 592. 

Neill, Charles P., 411, 502, 509. 

Nelson, Battling, 50. 

Nevada, checking of anarchy in, 408- 
411. 

Newbold, Thomas, 73. 

Newell, Frederick, H., 313, 428, 429, 
431, 434; single-minded devotion of, 
to work of reclamation, 432. 

New Forest, visit to the, 350. 

"New Freedom," Woodrow Wilson's, 
462, 621-630. 

Newlands, Senator Francis G., 428. 

Newsboys' Lodging-Houses, 13. 

Newspaper correspondents, help of, 
at Albany, 99; tribute to qualities 
and services of, at Washington, 385. 

Newspapers, criticism of attitude of 
certain, 162-163 ; deprecation of 
Spanish War by, 228; hostility of, 
to author in campaign of 1904, 422; 
support given to corporations by, 
464, 491-494; attacks by, due to 
author's action in Anthracite Strike, 
518; attack by, following speech 
condemning anarchistic labor leaders 
and capitalists alike, 527-528; de- 
nunciation by, owing to course in 
Santo Domingan trouble, 550-552; 
. attitude toward world cruise of 
battle fleet, 597-598. 

New York City, boyhood homes in, 
6, 7, 12; Police Commissionership 
of, 185; prevention of election 
frauds in, in 1900, 333-336. 

Niedicke, Paul, 52. 

Nile, bird-collecting on the, 23. 

Nobel Peace Prize, 587. 

Norris, Kathleen, "Mother" by, 180, 



North American Conservation Confer- 
ence, 447-448. 

Northern Securities Company case, 467- 
469, 470, 490. 

O 

Odell, B. B., 294, 390, 391. 
Office-holders, use of, to debauch po- 
litical conventions, 146. 
Ofiicers, riding and walking tests for, 

S4--S7- 
Oklahoma, protection of Indian rights 

and propertv in, 394. 
O'Neil, Bucky,' 269. 
O'Neill, William, 71-73, 87. 
Oregon land fraud cases, 405, 448. 
Organization of Government Scientific 

Work, Commission on, 399. 
Ornithological studies, 23-24. 
Ouida, "Under Two Flags" by, 19. 
Our Young Folks, 20, 30. 
Oyster Bay, residence at, 26. See 

Sagamore Hill. 



Packing-house inspection, 483. 

Palestine, bird-collecting in, 23. 

Palisade Park Commission, 321. 

Panama, Republic of, recognition of, 
by United States, 565-566. 

Panama Canal, history of period pre- 
liminary to building, 553-570; de- 
cision of kind of canal and work of 
building, 570-571. 

Panama Canal tolls, a matter for arbi- 
tration, 582. 

Panama Canal Zone, acquisition of, 
517; history of steps leading to 
acquisition of, 553 ff. 

"Panama Gateway," Bishop's, 574. 

Panama revolution, 564-566. 

Panic of 1907, 477-478, 517. 

Pardoning of criminals, 328-331, 487 ff. 

Parker, Alton B., 293, 422. 

Parker, Lieutenant, 270. 



642 



INDEX 



Parr, Richard, 484-486. 

Partridge, Colonel, 309, 310. 

Peace-at-any-price people, remarks on, 
223, fF., 232, 276, 575-581. 

Pelican Island rookery, 461. 

Perkins, George W., first meeting with, 
318-319; service on Palisade Park 
Commission, 321; mentioned, 508, 

523- 
Pettibone, 409, 528. 
Petty, New York police sergeant, 198. 
Phi Beta Kappa Society, Harvard, 28. 
Philadelphia Convention of 1900, 331- 

333- 

Philippine policy, 543-545- 

Pinchot, GifFord, 52, 313, 428, 431, 435, 
437, 440, 448, 452, 490; volunteer 
commissions suggested by, 402 ; 
invaluable work of, as head of For- 
estry Bureau, 429; chairman of 
National Conservation Commission, 

447- 

Pinnacles National Monument, 460. 

Pistol practice by New York police, 198. 

Piatt, Orville H., 150, 384. 

Piatt, T. P., 293, 294, 295, 296; posi- 
tion of, as a boss, 298-302 ; char- 
acter of opposition to, 302-303 ; 
examples of the rule of, 307 ff. ; 
custom of breakfasting with, 311- 
312; struggle with, over office of 
Superintendent of Insurance, 314- 
317; clash with, on franchise taxa- 
tion, 321-328; succeeds in nominat- 
ing author for the Vice-Presidency, 

332-333- 

Piatt National Park, Oklahoma, 460. 

Plunkett, Sir Horace, 452. 

Poetry, reading of, 21. 

Police Commissioner, service as, 185 If. 

Police lodging-houses, abolition of, 218. 

Politics, should not be one's sole career, 
62 ; author's early experiences in, 
62-70; improvement in, 76; ex- 
periences in practical, in New York 
Legislature, 76-101. 

Polo-playing, 46. 



Portsmouth, peace of, 585-586, 588. 

Post, Reginald, 310, 326. 

Powell, Major John Wesley, 428. 

Prairie fires, 120-122. 

Presidency, accession of author to the, 
379 > Jackson-Lincoln theory of, 
vs. Buchanan-Taft theory, 394-397, 
504; views as to three terms in the, 
422-425. 

Price, Overton W., 400, 441. 

Prize-fighting, 48-51. 

Proctor, John R., 144. 

Proctor, Senator, services of, in secur- 
ing Dewey's appointment, 231-232. 

Progressive Convention at Chicago 
(191 2), 106, 120. 

Progressive doctrine, the, 621-630. 

Prostitution, police work dealing with. 

215 ff- 

Prouty, Interstate Commerce Com- 
missioner, 477, 619. 

Pryor, Dr. John H., 313. 

Public land policy, 448-451. 

Public Lands Commission, 401, 448- 
449. 

Pure Food and Drugs Act, 483. 

Putnam, Rufus P., 152. 

Q 

Quaker strain in Roosevelt ancestry, I. 

Quay, Matthew S., pleasant relations 
of author while President with, 170- 
172 ; action of, at time of Anthracite 
Strike, 515. 

Quigg, L. E., 294-296. 

R 

Race, question of perpetuation of the, 

176 ff. 
Races, inadvisability of mixing, 411- 

412, 414-415. 
Radclyff'e, Captain, 52. 
Railways, regulation of, 473-477. 
Raines, John, 327. 
Rainey, Father, naval chaplain, 49. 



INDEX 



643 



Ranch life, 103-143. 

Raphael, Otto, 192-193. 

Reading, as a boy, 17, 19-22; choice 

of books for, 359-364; range of, 

for author's children, 375-376. See 

Books. 
Rebates, railway, 473-474. 
Reclamation, work of, 429 if. 
Reclamation Act, 428, 431, 432, 434, 

448. 
Reed, T. B., quoted, 167; mentioned, 

294. 
Reformers of "silk stocking" type, 96- 

97- 
Reid, Mayne, 17, 19, 20. 
Reid, New York policeman, 199. 
Remington, Frederic, 103, 133; "Bronco 

Buster" by, given to author, 356. 
Republican Administration, office-hold- 
ers used by, to debauch political 

convention of 191 2, 146. 
Republican party, position of, in 1898, 

297-298 ; in New York State, 298- 

303 ; at time of author's succession 

to Presidency, 381-382. 
Revolution of Panama against Colombia, 

564-566. 
Revolutions on Isthmus of Panama, 

555-558. 
Reynolds, James B., 313. 
Rhinoceros hunting, 40, 41. 
Richards, Laura E., children's books 

by, 20, 376. 
Rifle practice at Sagamore Hill, 36. 
Riis, Jacob, 48, 70, 211, 313; author's 

close association and work with, 

185 ff., 218-219; "How the Other 

Half Lives" by, 187. 
Rixey, Surgeon-General P. M., 52, 55. 
Robb, Hamden, 73. 
Robin, the English, 352. 
Robinson, Douglas, 294. 
"Robinson Crusoe," reading of, 20-21. 
Rock Creek, walks down, 51, 52. 
Rock Creek Park, family excursions to, 

365- 
Rockhill, Ambassador, 388. 



Roosevelt, Isaac, 3. 
Roosevelt, Kermit, 40. 
Roosevelt, Klaes Martensen van, i. 
Roosevelt, Martha Bulloch, 14. 
Roosevelt, Mrs. Theodore, gift of silver 
vase to, by men of the Louisiana, 
356. 
Roosevelt, Robert, 15. 
Roosevelt, Theodore, father of author, 

8-14. 
Roosevelt, Theodore, ancestry, 1-5 ; 
birth of, 6; childhood, 6 ff. ; father, 
8-14; mother, 14-15; relatives, 
15-16; schooling, 17; early interest 
in natural history, 17-19, 22-24; 
reading as a child, 19-22; winter 
abroad, 23-26; p^eparation for 
college, 26-27; course at HarvarcL, 
27-31; exercise and sports, 32 S\; 
game shooting, 40-42 ; boxing and 
wrestling, 47-51; exercise while 
President, 51-54; breaking into poli- 
tics, 62-64; election to New York 
Legislature, 70; experiences in the 
Assembly, 70 ff. ; defeat for nomina- 
tion as Speaker, and beneficial re- 
sults, 95-97 ; ranch life on the Little 
Missouri, 103-143 ; unsuccessful 
campaign for Mayoralty of New 
York City, 144; appointment and 
work as Civil Service Commissioner, 
144 ff . ; service as Police Commis- 
sioner of New York City, 185-222; 
appointment to Assistant Secretary- 
ship of the Navy, 224; prepara- 
tion for the Spanish War, 230 ff . ; 
appointed Lieutenant-Colonel of the 
Rough Riders, 238; activities in 
getting regiment to Cuba, 249-255 ; 
the fight at La Guasima and Kettle 
Hill, 256-261; battle of San Juan 
Hill, 261-266; round-robin incident, 
267-269, 278-279; letters concern- 
ing share in battle of San Juan Hill, 
279-291 ; election and work as 
Governor of New York, 293 ff. ; 
nomination to the Vice-Presidency, 



644 



INDEX 



33i~333> message giving views on 
conservation, 337-339; residence at 
Sagamore Hill, 342 ff. ; study of 
birds and flowers in United States 
and England, 343 ff. ; succession to 
the Presidency, 379; broadening of 
use of executive power, 389 ff. ; 
creation of volunteer unpaid com- 
missions, 399-402 ; nomination and 
election to Presidency in 1904, 421- 
422 ; work of conservation and rec- 
lamation of nation's natural re- 
sources, 428-461 ; regulation and 
control of corporations, 462 ff. ; 
Tennessee Coal and Iron Company 
case, 478-482; work in behalf of 
social and industrial justice, 501 
ff. ; services in connection with coal 
strike of 1902, 504-518; attitude on 
question of labor unions, 512, 518- 
523 ; views regarding Socialism, 
523-527, 541-542; difficulties with 
Western Federation of Miners, 527 
ff. ; views held of Monroe Doctrine, 
546-547; arrangement of Santo 
Domingan trouble, 548-552; action 
in regard to Colombia and the 
Panama Canal, 553-571 ; arbitra- 
tion of Russo-Japanese War, 583- 
587; project of world cruise of 
battle fleet, 592-605 ; discussion 
of the trusts, the people, and the 
square deal, 606-620; reply to 
attacks of Woodrow Wilson, 621- 
630. 

Roosevelt Dam, dedication of the, 434- 
435- 

Roosevelt family, 1-8, 14-16, 364-377. 

Roosevelt Museum of Natural History, 
18, 24. 

Root, Elihu, 608. 

Ross, Professor, quoted, 488. 

Roswell estate, 4, 6. 

Rough Riders, 133, 136-141 ; organiza- 
tion of regiment called, 238, 240; 
equipping the, 245-248; personnel 
of the, 248-249; drilling of the, 249- 



251; New York Evening Post on 

the, 249 n. ; activities of, in Spanish 

War, 253 ff. 
Round-robin incident at Santiago, 268, 

278-279. 
Round-up, description of, 109-115. 
Rowing as an exercise, 46-47. 
Rungius, Carl, painting by, 358. 
Runyon, W. Cleveland, on commutation 

of sentences of criminals, 488. 
Russo-Japanese War, settlement of the, 

583-587- 
Ryan, New York policeman, 199. 



Sagamore Hill, derivation of name, 342 ; 
description of, 342-345 ; birds at, 
345> 353-355; bronzes and objects 
of interest at, 355-358; books at, 
359-361; the children at, 364-377. 

Saint-Gaudens, "Puritan" by, 357; 
new coinage designed by, 459. 

Saloons, regulation of, in New York, 
207-213. 

Sampson, Admiral, 230. 

San Antonio, gathering-place of Rough 
Riders, 238, 240. 

Sanclamente, M. A., President of 
Colombia, 559-560. 

San Juan Hill, battle of, 262-266; 
letters relative to author's part in 
battle of, 279-291. 

Santiago, the fighting around, 265-266; 
siege and surrender of, 266. 

Santo Domingo, settlement of diffi- 
culties in, 548-552. 

Sargent, John S., paintings of White 
House by, 358. 

Schofield, General, 514-515. 

Schroeder, Admiral, 230, 595. 

Schurz, Carl, letter to, 589-592. 

Scotch-Irish among Roosevelt ancestors, 
2, 4. 

Selous, African hunter, 52, 375-376. 

Sewall, William, 36, 87; at the Elkhorn 
ranch, 106, 108. 



INDEX 



645 



Shafter, General, 253, 254, 267, 268. 

Sharp, Lieutenant-Commander, 255. 

Shaw, Albert, 340. 

Sherman Anti-Trust Law, 463, 465, 470, 
609-619. 

Shields, cowboy-soldier, 271. 

Shipp, Lieutenant W. E., 261. 

Shooting, 36. 

Simkhovitch, V. D., "Marxism versus 
Socialism" by, 541-542. 

Simpson, "Hashknife," 122. 

Simpson, Sloan, 122. 

Sims, Federal District Attorney, 406, 
407. _ 

Sims, Lieutenant, 232. 

Smith, F. Hopkinson, sketches of White 
House by, 358. 

Smith, Herbert Knox, 411, 456-459, 
471, 490. 

Snyder, deputy sheriff, 129. 

Social conditions, improvement of, as a 
Government duty, 174-175. 

Socialism, Simkhovitch's book dealing 
with, 541-542. 

Socialist, terming of author a, 523. 

Socialists, 168; discussion and criticism 
of doctrines of, 523-527. 

Spalding, Bishop, 509. 

Spanish War, unpreparedness of America 
for, 223-227 ; preparing the navy 
for, 230-234; attitude of people in 
general at beginning of, 234-237; 
organization of Rough Riders, 238- 
240; conditions in Navy and War 
Departments, 240-245 ; equipping 
the Rough Riders, 245-248; em- 
barcation for Cuba, 253-255 ; the 
Guasimas fight, 256-261 ; battle of 
San Juan Hill, 262-266; capture of 
Santiago, 266; round-robin incident, 
267-268, 278 ; end of war and dis- 
bandment at Montauk Point, 275 ; 
letters concerning author's share in, 
278-291. 

Spectator, London, on world voyage of 
American battle fleet, 595. 

Sperry, Admiral, 595 ; letter by, con- 



cerning world cruise of battle fleet, 
599-602. 

Spinney, George, 99. 

Spitzer, dock superintendent, 485. 

Spoils system, the, 144 ff. 

Sprague, Henry, 73. 

Spring-Rice, Cecil, 36. 

Square Deal, in dealing with corpora- 
tions, 477 ff., 606 ff. 

Stalwart faction of Republican party, 

76, 95- 

Standard Oil Company, opposition of, 

to legislation affecting corporations, 

471. 
Standaid Oil Company suit, 469. 
Steel Corporation and the Tennessee 

Coal and Iron Company, 478-483, 

607-609. 
Steele, Lieutenant, 275. 
Stelzle, Rev. Charles, 215. 
Sternberg, Baron Speck von, 36. 
Stetson, Francis Lynde, 85. 
Steunenberg, Governor, murder of, 527. 
Stevens, Captain M. J., 282; letter by, 

286. 
Stewart, Granville, 122. 
Stimson, District Attorney, 391, 406, 

486, 611. 
Stockman's Association of Montana, 

122. 
Straus, Oscar, 471, 490, 587. 
"Strenuous Life," speech and volume of 

essays on, 58. 
"Strike" bills, in New York Legislature, 

77-78, 81. 
Strong, Mayor, 185, 187, 294. 
Success, degrees and attainment of, 58- 

59; the highest type of, 378. 
Suffrage, universal, 174 ff. 
Sugar Trust, 406; investigation of 

frauds perpetrated by, 484 ff. 
Sugar Trust prosecution, 466. 
Sullivan, Big Tim, 206-207. 
Sullivan, Jerry D., 206. 
Sullivan, John L., 50-51. 
Sully Hill Park, 460. 
Sumner, General Samuel S., 243, 261, 



646 



INDEX 



262, 263, 264 268; letters by, 282, 

289-291. 
Sun, New York, quoted on author's 

position before National Convention 

of 1904, 425 n. 
Superintendent of Insurance, struggle 

with Piatt over, 314-317. 
Supreme Court, upholding of executive 

orders of author as President by, 

393 ; decisions concerning control of 

corporations, 465, 466, 468, 469; 

occurrence of necessity of legislation 

by, 613. 
"Swiss Family Robinson," dislike for, 21. 



Taft, William H., removal of Henry 
White by, 388; narrowly legalistic 
view of Presidency held by, 395 ; 
example of views of power and duties 
of President found in the Ballinger 
case, 396-397; upholding of politi- 
cians against the volunteer unpaid 
commissions by, 402 ; pardon by, of 
man convicted of land fraud, 406; 
removal of Gifford Pinchot from 
headship of Forestry Bureau, 429; 
stopping of educational work of the 
Forest Service under, 436; attitude 
toward the Conservation and other 
Commissions, 454, 455 ; disband- 
ment of the Fine Arts Council, 459; 
pardoning of criminals by, 487-488 ; 
acquisition of Tennessee Coal and 
Iron Company made a ground for" 
dissolving the Steel Corporation by, 
606 ff. 

Tammany Hall, 64, 73, 74, 76, 185; 
alliance of, with saloons in New York 
City, 208-210; fight against Croker 
and, in Governorship campaign of 
1898, 296. 

Target shooting, 36, 38. 

Tawney, Congressman, 402, 443. 

Tawney amendment to Sundry Civil 
bill, 454-455. 



Taxidermy, lessons in, 22. 

Taylor, Admiral, 230. 

Taylor, Buck, 138. 

Tenement-house cigar legislation, 88-90. 

Tenement-house conditions, first-hand 
investigation of, 218-220. 

Tennessee Coal and Iron Company case, 
432, 478-483 ; discussion of case, 
when made a ground for dissolving 
the Steel Corporation, 607-609. 

Tennis Cabinet, the, 51-52, 54, 386. 

Tests, riding and walking, for officers, 

54-57- 
Thayer, Professor James, 61. 
Third-term views, 422-425. 
Thomas, Admiral, 595. 
Thompson, Hugh, 144. 
Thrush, the English, 351. 
Tillman, Senator, 475. 
Torpedo boats in world voyage of battle 

fleet, 596-597- 
Trade-unionism, 221, 512, 518 ff. 
Trusts, regulation of, and square deal 

to, 477 ff., 606-620. 
Turner, Senator, 384. 

U 

Uncle Remus, a forerunner of, 15. 
"Under Two Flags," story of reading of, 

19- 

Universal suffrage, 174-180. 

Universities, gifts to, as a means of sub- 
sidizing heads of educational bodies, 
492. 

V 

Van Duzer, Jonas, 73. 

Venezuela, attitude of United States 
toward, 547-548 ; prevention of oc- 
cupation of, by Germany, 552-553 ; 
difference between case of, and that 
of Colombia, 573. 

Vice, measures to be taken concerning, 
215-218. 

Vice-Presidency, nomination to the, 

. 3.32-333- 
Virginia, house in, 345. 



INDEX 



647 



Volunteer unpaid commissions, 399- 
402 ; abandoned by President Taft, 
402. 

Votes for women, 174-184. 



W 



Wadsworth, Austin, 339. 

Wainwright, Admiral, 230, 232, 595, 602. 

Walcott, Charles D., 399, 428, 432. 

Waldron, Roosevelt ancestor, i. 

Wallace, Henry, 451. 

Wall Street, opposition of, to Spanish 

War, 228 ; opposition in campaign 

of 1904, 421; hostility of, shown at 

time of Santo Domingan trouble, 

551. See also Big Business. 
Walsh, banker, case of, 406, 407. 
War, necessity of preparation for, 223- 

226, 575-581. 
Waring, George F., 185. 
Washburn, Stanley, biography of General 

Nogi by, 245. 
Water power, control of, by private 

interests, 457. 
Water-power policy established by Forest 

Service, 442-443. 
Watson, Thomas, 451. 
Weismann, Henry, 221. 
Welch, Thomas, 73. 
Western Federation of Miners, troubles 

concerning, 408-411, 527-532. 
Weston, General, 248. 
West Point officers, 242. 
Weyl, Walter, "New Democracy" by, 30. 
Wheeler, General Joseph, 260, 261, 265, 

281. 
Whipping advocated for men white 

slavers, 216. 
Whisky, on hunting trips, 43. 
White, Chief Justice, quoted, 468. 
White, Henry, 388, 587. 
White, Stewart Edward, excellence as a 

shot, 36. 
White slave traffic, 216, 407-408. 
Wichita Game Preserves, 460. 
Widener, Squire Bill, quoted, 365. 



Wilcox, Ansley, 379. 

Wild life, measures for protection of, 
459-461. 

Wilgus, Horace L., paper by, 619. 

Willis, John, 127. 

Wilson, Woodrow, the "New Freedom" 
of, 462 ; pardoning of criminals by, 
487-488 ; reply to attacks on author 
contained in the "New Freedom," 
621-630. 

Wind Cave Park, 460. 

Winslow, Cameron, 230, 358. 

Wise, Assistant District-Attorney, 406, 
486. 

Wister, Owen, 103, 133. 

Wolverton, Judge, 391, 393. 

Woman's suffrage, 176-184. 

Wood, J. G., natural history books by, 21. 

Wood, Leonard, 48, 52, 54, 254 ff., 267, 
281, 285, 368; superlative qualities 
of, 237; appointed colonel of First 
United States Volunteer Cavalry 
(Rough Riders), 238; gift for or- 
ganization, 248 ; wins brigadier- 
generalship, 266 ; work as Governor 
of Cuba, 545. 

Woodruff, George, 441. 

Woodruff, Timothy L., 293, 308, 333. 

Woody, Tazewell, 127. 

Wrestling as an exercise, 47. 

Wright, Carroll D., 506, 509, 534. 

Wynne, Robert J., 403. 



Yellowstone Park, visit to, with John 

Burroughs, 346-347. 
Yosemite, visit to the, with John Muir, 

347-349- 
Young, General S. B. M., 243, 256, 261, 

281, 563. 
Young Men's Christian Association, 

boxing recommended for, 49. 
Youngs, William J., 326. 



Zoology, first steps in, 17-18. 



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To be Completed in Twelve Volumes 

Each Volume Cloth, 8vo, ^3.50 np:t Carriage Extra 



These writings, which are of a permanent historical value 
and which are essential to a comprehension of the man in 
all his private and public relations only, are chosen for this 
notable collection, the first volume of which is now ready. 
Nothing has been suppressed by the editor which can con- 
tribute to this main purpose. John Quincy Adams led a 
very eventful life, more than fifty years of it having been 
passed in public service. He was at all times a prohfic 
writer and correspondent and has left behind him a great 
mass of material. A discriminating selection from this will 
be of the utmost value, not only because of the light which 
it throws upon one of the leaders of our early democracy, but 
also in that it will serve to vivify the social customs of an 
age that is past. 



" The unsealing of most interesting material . . . the re- 
maining volumes will be anticipated by students of history 
with keen interest." — Boston Transcript. 

"... whoever begins the work will be sure not only to 
finish it, but to follow it up with the ensuing volumes no 
matter how many there may be." — James L. Ford in The 
New York Herald. 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



The Life of Benjamin Disraeli 
Earl of Beaconsfield 

By WILLIAM FLAVELLE MONYPENNY 

Vol. I, 1804-1837 
Vol. II, 1837-1852 

Each illustrated, doth 8vo, 401 pages, $3.00 net; by mail, $3.18 



" Benjamin Disraeli was doubtless one of the most picturesque, brilliant, and 
astute politicians that England ever produced. There are few of the older men 
of this generation, familiar with the political events of the Victoria period of 
British history, who have not formed firm convictions of this man's character 
and influence. He was in all probability the most aggressive statesman, and the 
most highly praised and severely criticised man that ever rose to fame and in- 
fluence in the British Parliament. Although dead for a generation, men have 
not ceased to wonder at the enormous success he was able to achieve against 
odds which, to ordinary mortals, would have seemed impossible barriers." — 
Boston Herald. 



" It is on the whole a very human, though egotistical Disraeli that the biog- 
rapher gives us, brilliant, witty, ambitious, but by no means the unscrupulous 
adventurer that the late Goldwin Smith and other enemies have depicted. His 
best defence is his own personal letters, which the author has wisely allowed to 
constitute the bulk of the book." — Chicago Record- Herald. 

" Disraeli had extraordinary powers, infinite ambition, audacious genius and 
industry, and in tracing thirty- three years of this extraordinary career Mr. Mony- 
penny has made a book vitally interesting in its revelation of character." — Des 
Moines Capital. 

"The volume leaves Disraeli just as he entered upon his parliamentary career, 
and if the material for the succeeding volumes is handled as frankly as that used 
in the present, the biography should be one of the most interesting of recent 
years. Disraeli had a far more picturesque personality than Gladstone, and the 
biographies of the two great rivals furnish interesting comparisons." — World 
To- Day. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



